[Spoilers] Defining the phrase "€˜Hung Like a Horse"€™: Pb & the Kuriotates

[pocketbeetle]

Hey everyone!
I’m intending to play really friendly and honestly, and win by culture.
I’ll never lie, cheat or backstab, and will try to avoid war at all costs!

I’m going to try and found a peaceful religion like the Leaves one, and then maybe get the free Great Bard and the Lyre wonder and maybe…

… that’s 50 words.


Always wanted to do that

Now that rubbish is out of the way, let’s try and quickly summarise what’s going on here, before unveiling my plans for world domination at all costs.

[pocketbeetle]

Released in 2006, FFH2 is a highly popular mod for Civ4 based on a D&D campaign of the same name. I’m not going to try and explain every detail of it, but suffice it to say, this means Elves, Dwarves, Werewolves, Vampires and Magic. Golems, not guns.

Who does it appeal to?
Well, if you’ve ever found air combat and nukes in Civ4 BTS tiresome, if you sometimes play on marathon speed in order to prolong the fun of knights and swordsmen clashing, then this mod may be for you. And even if you end up disliking the changes, you can’t help but admire the amount of work and creativity that’s gone into this mod.

There’s an entirely new tech tree, of roughly the same scale as base Civ4, but scaled vertically not horizontally, representing a greater focus on the early ages.

Arquebusiers (crude muskets) and cannon represent the pinnacle of the tree, while the larger number of early worker techs serve to slow development down significantly. Barbarian combat is more frequent, with wild animals receiving a serious strength increase.
Sometimes when the map reads ‘Here Be Dragons’ they mean it.

There are also some changes made for simple playability and convenience.
I’ve always hated how late Paper comes in Civ4. You’re telling me that my civ can build castles thanks to Engineering, learned Writing a thousand years ago to grant open borders, yet can’t scratch a few lines in the dirt to say ‘Ug, my land’? Another good example is when you’ve just learned the ability to build mines around your capital, but now can’t, because in the meantime a forest has spread, and now you have to research a significant tech like Slavery to be able to chop it down.
FFH2 improves on some of these issues, with open borders, map trading, lumbermills and deforestry all coming reasonably early.
Future Tech makes a reappearance at the end of the tech tree, but if you manage to reach it, then frankly you’re doing something wrong.

While I’m never going to pretend the mod is perfect, you will find my general tone in this thread to be positive

Let’s talk quickly about the civs:

There are 21 overall, for which the lead designer set out to make individually different. Rather than just a single unique building and unit, game mechanics are significantly altered for each race: some civs prefer coastal and sea locations, some prefer desert or ice: all tend to perform better in their native environments.
Playstyle can also be greatly affected by choice of religion, of which there are 7, and leader (typically 2-3 with different traits for each civ).

Enough PR
The release thread is over here if you want to go read about it.


Let’s talk about this PBEM, starting with the players.



And just as a future note:
This thread will contain swear words, temper tantrums, frequent and derisive commentary on the intelligence/ provable parentage/ size of cojones (or lack of) of either a) other players b) the map maker (sorry Darrell ) c) anyone who annoys me.
If you are likely to be insulted by any of this, feel free to exit stage right, the carebears forum is that-a-way

You have been warned.









And please tell me you didn’t just click the carebears link…did you?

[pocketbeetle]

[b]Players:[/b]

My esteemed allies/future victims, in order of likely threat (least to most):

• Sareln: Been at these forums for quite a while, but has mentioned struggling on higher difficulties several times.
  
• Cull: Gah, university students. They’re frequently drunk, but the damn critters have a habit of learning things fast (usually the night before the exam).
  I think he started off a newbie like me, but has thrown himself into playing the Pitboss and PBEM games with enthusiasm and definitely seems to be improving. It’s possible he’s overextended himself with too many games, which may distract.
  
• Archduke: Another student. Like Sareln he’s been around for a while, but has mentioned struggling on higher difficulties, ~Monarch player?
  
• Selrahc: Again, only appeared recently, and hasn’t taken part in any Adventures/Epics/MP games at RB. But there is a Selrahc active in Succession games over at a non RB/CFC forum (yes I bothered to do a search), and he has quite a few posts over at Civ Fanatics in the FFH2 section also.
  I think it’s clear he’s played -a lot- of FFH2 with a number of different races, and I think his choice of civ (Illians) is quite shrewd. Definitely one to watch.
  
• Bobchillingworth: Only appeared recently, but confident enough to take non cookie cutter choices. Seems to have a good understanding of what he’s talking about – particularly FFH, and has chosen a dangerous civ. Smooth talker?
  In short, I expect Bob to be a solid contender, although maybe a little loose in micro.
  

So how do I measure up to a similar assessment?
I’m also a recent appearance, having only bought Civ4 around ~4 months ago?
In terms of FFH2:

• I’ve completed less than half the scenarios that come with the mod.
  
• The number of custom games I’ve played can be counted on a single 7 fingered hand.
  
• I’ve probably tried only a quarter of the different civs.
  
• Prior to this PBEM had never played the Kuriotates.
  

Those are the slightly () negative points.

The positives are:

• I learn fast.
  
• I have OCD perfectionism. (Find a spelling mistake in this thread to earn yourself a cookie).
  
• My micro and builder traits are, I feel, solid.
  

If I’m going to get spanked anywhere, it’s in my lack of MP warfare, and the single player tendency to try and farmer’s gambit while I tech for the military equivalent of tanks vs spearmen.
As such, I’m going to make a conscious effort to maintain a credible power rating at all times – if I start posting pictures of my main cities being defended by 2 warriors, please slap me.

In terms of diplomacy, I’m glad this is no tech trading, and hence diplo-lite.
I don’t have the time or inclination to write flowery posts wishing my opponents all the best, while counting the ways to kill them. If someone pisses me off, I’ll probably tell them.

In a similar vein, I don’t intend to be signing (m)any NAPs at all.
It’s pointless to keep a decent power rating if the next door neighbour is running military lite protected by NAPs, and as a result expanding/teching ahead.
The initial paragraph of this thread had an element of truth in it: I will be aiming for a builder type victory rather than domination. But that’s simply because this is the Kuriotates’ area of excellence: teching and wonder chasing.
However if said neighbour decides to take the piss, I’ll quite happily trample hoof prints all over his cities.

Finally, as I mentioned in the planning thread, this isn’t the ultra serious competition the above analysis seems to suggest.
Barbarians, huts, lairs and doubled frequency of events means there’s going to be a huge element of luck in this game, which in part is why I was happy to go for a civ I’d never played before.
Although I’m hoping skill will factor in somewhere along the line, the truth is that one player popping 2-3 early (high beaker) techs from huts, coupled with maybe a free Golden Age or Specialist, will end up giving them an unassailable lead.
It’s also been commented in the past that Barbs will tend to focus on one or two players, whether through terrain funnelling, AI quirkiness, or just having multiple Barb city/lairs spawn close to you (fogbust!).
So, fingers are being kept crossed.


tl;dr version:
Try not to be a MP noob.
Make friends with Sareln, Cull and Archduke.
Kill Bob and Selrahc.
(Get lucky)
Win.


Okay, so what are we up against?

[pocketbeetle]

[b]The Civs:[/b]

Every race in FFH2 has at least three different characteristics:

• Separate palace, often providing a specific bonus, as well as three varying types of mana (more on this at another time).
  
• At least one unique hero, for example the sea-faring Lanun, modelled around pirates, get a character called ‘Guybrush Threepwood’. (Sadly he has no sword-insult fighting abilities, but he does ‘sing’ )
  
• A unique, one-off use spell, called a World Spell.
  

This is in addition to a host of other ‘tweaked’ units, specific buildings, religion specific unique heroes and wildly different game mechanics.


Archduke – Hippus – Rhoanna (Fin/Exp)

The Hippus revolve around horsemen.

Any mounted units produced by them get a specific promotion called Horselord, which gives +1 movement and +10% withdrawal rate. Mounted units in FFH2 typically have a base movement of 3 and 25% withdrawal anyway, so coupled with this promotion the Hippus are capable of producing highly mobile hit-and-runners.

Their palace gives them +1 Horse resource from turn 1, so you can’t deny them the ability to produce their best units.

Their world spell is called Warcry.
It provides a one-off benefit, giving every Hippus unit at the time of casting +1 strength, +1 movement and Blitz. The bonus has a 5% chance to wear off every turn. The upshot of Warcry is to make the Hippus very effective rushers, particularly in the early game where +1 strength and movement is proportionally a bigger boost to warriors than to horse archers.
They cannot build the endgame cannons/arquebusiers.

However despite all this, the Hippus play pretty much like any medieval Civ4 civilisation. No quirky mechanics.
This often leads to them being regarded as boring but solid.
Coupled with an extremely good leader (Financial + Expansive), and Archduke should do okay.

Apparently this was Archduke’s second choice, his first being the Khazad, which went to Cull…

[pocketbeetle]

Cull – Khazad – Kandros Fir (Fin/Agg/Ing)

Classic Dwarves: money grabbing, units get +2 xp if you have the ‘ale’ luxury resource, preferred terrain: hills, where they get double movement akin to the standard Civ4 Guerrilla II promotion.

Their palace gives them a free Gold resource for a strong happy luxury, while their game mechanic is based around the size of their treasury, ie gold coins.
Or to put it another way: literally what they have in their drawers.

Take the Khazad player’s cash reserve per city (ie total gold/number cities). If it works out as:

• Less than 50gp per city = +2 unhappiness penalty.
  
• 50-99gp/city = +1 unhappiness penalty.
  
• 100-149gp/city = no effect
  
• 150-199gp/city = +1 happy.
  
• 200-299gp/city = +2 happy +10% production
  
• 300-499gp/city = +2 happy, +25% production
  
• 500+gp/city is the final limit.
  At this point the little Dwarfies are getting +3 happy, +40% production, +25% great people production in every city.
  

However this mechanic can be as much a blessing as a curse if you decide to focus on it. It forces you to slow down both your research and expansion rate, and God help you if anyone ever manages to take a city from you. The plunder reward!

Can only get low level arcane casters, which is a significant restriction.

World Spell: Mother Lode.
Grants 25g per mine they own, plus 10% chance of terraforming flat tiles to hill in their territory.
Again, a blessing and a curse. The gold is good, and a few more hills can be nice, but casting this spell late game can seriously degrade your cities’ food supply.
-My understanding- is that it’s typically used early game, while you’re still on 1-2 cities.

In terms of Cull playing this civ, the leader (Financial/Aggressive) was the obvious and correct choice in a no-tech trading game. Kandros also comes with a third trait called Ingenuity: it gives 50gp at the start of the game and halves upgrade costs, to help the Dwarves upgrade units.

Dwarf players and AIs often go for the ‘Runes of Kilmorph’ religion, as it helps boost gp income and is the only way to gain access to the Guerrilla II promotion (Guerrilla I is freely available, Guerrilla II is religion restricted). Cull and I may end competing to found the Runes of Kilmorph Holy city however, as I intend it to be one of my targets also. We’ll see how that goes.

Conventional wisdom is that the Khazad are solid early and middle game, but tend to fall off towards endgame (despite having an upgraded cannon unit), in part due to their lack of high level arcane casters.
So long as Cull remembers to settle most of his cities on hills he should be fine: entrenched Dwarves in a hill city with a guerrilla promotion or two are just vicious. Certainly I won’t be hurrying to attack if so.

Enough text, let’s have a picture:

Their unique unit above is Maros, a midgame unit who continues the ‘Dwarven Defender’ theme by having a base strength of 6/12, ie 6 attack and 12 defense. He also comes with a +50% city defense attribute.

So to take a back of envelope calculation: stick Maros in a hill city (25%) with the standard fortify bonus (25%), let’s be stingy and give the city only 10% culture defense. Finally let’s give him 1 promotion (2xp): Guerilla I for 40% hill defense.
Result: 12 str + 150% = 30str on defense.

Give him some Drill promotions and you are…not…taking…that…city.

Who’s next? Ah Sareln.

[pocketbeetle]

Sareln – Svartalfar – Faeryl Viconia (Arc/Raid)

Winners of the hardest name to spell award, it’s the Elves. Or more specifically, Dark Elves.

Palace gives -10% War Weariness (pfft)

World spell: Veil of Night.
Grants the ‘Hidden Nationality’ promotion to all Svartalfar combat units.
Hidden Nationality units appear as ‘Barbarian’ to all other civs, and thus allows the Svartalfar player to conduct a war without having to declare, with no diplomatic repercussions. Any cities captured by a Hidden Nationality unit are auto razed, it’s possible to Declare Nationality before taking a city.

All elves can build improvements (farms/workshops/cottages) on forest tiles, without chopping the forest. Means you get an extra hammer from most tiles and also improved health, but you can’t get the +1 commerce bonus for being adjacent to a river. If the elf player then picks up the ‘Fellowship of Leaves’ religion which greatly raises their happy cap (each forest tile = +1 happy), they then end up with a nice little formula.
Forested farms + high health cap + high happy cap = large cities ~ think specialist economy.

However I’m critical of Sareln’s choice, and surprised that this civ/leader appeared on quite a few players’ lists.
The above combination sounds great, but it’s available to all elves.
There is another elf race available (Ljosalfar – goodie elves) and they have much better leader choices.

Let’s start with the positives of the Svartalfar first (it’ll be short):

• All Recon units gain ‘Sinister’ promotion for +1 attack, ie +1/0.
  Where recon units = assassins, shadows, early scouts, and their upgraded forms: hunter, ranger, beastmaster.
  
• Following the sneaky theme, the Svartalfar hero is a semi decent assassin who comes with a fantastic item – the Black Mirror. It creates an exact copy of the hero, which lasts 1 turn, and can be used to soften up an enemy at no risk.
  
• Kidnap Ability.
  -If- you are stupid enough to sign open borders with a Svartalfar player, and –if- you are dumb enough to let them move a recon unit into one of your main cities, they have the ability to steal a settled Great Specialist. Percentage chance of success is 8x the unit’s base strength, and upon success results in loss of the GSpec from the city, and the corresponding appearance of a mobile unsettled GSpec, under Svart control.
  Failure results in war being declared automatically and a 50% chance the unit dies.
  Endgame recon units do come with invisibility however, so it’s not as bad as I’m making it out to be.
  It occurs to me now that it could be an interesting way of rejigging specialists in the endgame, if you can trust the Svart player…
  
• Elves get double movement in forests – available also to Ljosalfar, see earlier criticism.
  

That’s it. Now the negatives of Faeryl Viconia.
Let’s start with the leader traits, because they suck:

• Raiders provides a free Commando promotion to all units (Can use enemy roads, +1 first strike) and +100% pillage gold.
  In multiplayer, having free Commando could be undoubtedly quite strong, but you need to have the units to do it, and I can’t see that with the Svartalfar. The Hippus on the other hand; I noticed one of Bob’s choices was a Hippus leader with raiders…that could have been brutal.
  But regardless of pros or cons, a financial trait Raiders ain’t.
  
• Arcane means that all arcane spellcasters gain promotions/xp faster, and allows a half priced mage guild. (There are two branches of magic tree, divine and arcane, so this is only boosting half your spellcasters)
  Going a bit deeper into the technical, Svartalfar mages are weaker than normal mages anyway, as all their summons are forced into being illusions, which cannot kill, only wound an enemy down to 10% health. (If I’m missing a huge benefit of Illusionist, please speak up.)
  So again, this is a military not economic trait, whose only positive is earlier mages/archmages, assuming you can actually reach the required techs.
  
• World Spell sucks.
  It sounds cool, but a human opponent is not going to be fooled when, after a worldwide announcement that ‘Veil of the Night’ has been cast, a sudden army of ELF barbarians turn up on his borders. In a larger game, maybe just maybe it could be useful. But in a 6 player game like this, where there are no other elves? Nah.
  The Sidar (a civ not in this game) have a similar worldspell. Instead it turns all their units invisible, and only detectable by a limited number of units. Give me that spell any day; an invisible army is a heck of a lot more scary than a deniable barbarian army.
  
• Elf workers are lazy, and get a -20% workrate penalty. Compare to a dwarf +25% workrate improvement. I’m not certain, but on quickspeed this workrate penalty may result, due to rounding errors, in a minimum 1 turn addition to all worker actions.
  
• Prevented from building a bunch of top tier units (berserkers, cannons, arquebusiers), cannot build even basic siege units like catapults.
  

In short, I commend Sareln on taking a fun flavoursome civ like the Svartalfar.
But equally, I think he’s going to struggle with expansion and tech rate, and should’ve chosen a more solid race/leader.
I hope he proves me wrong.

[pocketbeetle]

Bobchillingworth – Calabim – Decius (Org/Raid)

Now we’re talking.
I’m trying to skirt around spoilerish statements here, but I’ve being following Bob’s PBEM3 thread. In it, he went with an unusual leader choice, because he didn’t want to be boring, and wanted to walk the road less travelled.
In that PBEM, he made a definite choice to have a strong UU like the Praetorian.

Well, in choosing to go Calabim, he’s essentially taken that Praetorian and gone nuclear.

The Calabim are vampires, they specialise in small numbers of highly promoted combat units. To steal a quote, they’re something of a “one-trick pony faction, and pay a significant price for that trick, but it’s a mighty impressive one”
The method they use to gain this is direct food -> xp translation.

A unit which has the Vampirism promotion (not to be confused with a Vampire, which is a type of unit ingame), has a number of options:

• Firstly, it has a basic +10% str and +5% heal rate just from having the promotion.
  
  
• Gift Vampirism: It can grant the Vampire promotion to another unit at no cost; the only requirement is that the gifted unit must be level 6 or higher. For those that are counting, that’s 26xp. Morois, a mid tier Calabim unit, can receive it at level 4, 10xp.
  
  
• Feed: This action kills a bloodpet in the same tile as the vampiric unit (bloodpets are basic warrior equivalents for the Calabim, the only difference being they never obsolete, and hence can be built throughout the game).
  The benefit for the vampire is that it heals and regains 1 movement. Current manual/pedia entries that say it allows an extra attack are apparently wrong.
  
  
• Feast: This is the kicker. This ability which can only be cast in cities, grants the caster 1xp per city population – 3. In doing so it reduces the population of the city by 1, and causes 3 turns of unhappiness. So a Vampire feasting on a size 13 city would gain 10xp, the population of the city would go down to 12.
  

Sound scary? It is.

However there are several things holding the Calabim back.

• Slow tech rate.
  Calabim can’t build Sage Councils, which are essential early science buildings. As such, the first point they can hire scientist specialists is via libraries from Writing.
  That takes quite a while in FFH2.
  
  
• Constantly sick and unhappy cities. A lot of vampires feasting mean a lot of either unhappy or dead citizens.
  
  
• Two notable power jumps. There are two points in the tech tree when the Calabim suddenly increase severalfold in power.
  • The first point is when they gain a unit with the Vampire promotion and so can start gifting Vampirism around. They don’t start with one.
    Their unique unit (Losha Valas) is obviously a Vampire from the getgo however, and she is accessible via the Fanaticism tech. The other option is Feudalism, which allows them to build the basic Vampire unit.
    Both Feudalism and Fanaticism are relatively deep techs, and until the Calabim player gets them, he’s stuck with the basic bloodpet/moroi combination.
    
    
  • The second point is on teching Divine Essence – at which point Vampire Lords become enabled. Level 12 units (around 120xp) can be upgraded to Vampire Lords, and although only a limited number (3) are allowed, they’re immensely powerful due to the Immortal promotion.
    

Unfortunately – regarding the sick/unhappy cities point above, the Calabim get two unique buildings to help in this department.
They get the Governor’s Mansion (modified courthouse) that gives +1 production for each unhappy citizen in the city. This bonus includes the ‘We feel crowded’ unhappy citizens, so a Governor’s Mansion will instantly add at least 10h production each turn to a size 10 city.
Secondly, the Breeding Pit gives +2 food, +1 unhealthiness and stores 20% of food per pop increase. This percentage can stack with the FFH2 granary (20%) and smokehouse (20%) to give a total food storage of 60% - the max possible for any civ.


World Spell: River of Blood.
Reduces the population of all enemy cities by 2, increases the pop of Calabim cities by 2.
Typically used either on turn 1 to get a fast size 3 city, around turn 15 to send enemy capitals back down to size 1, or late game when all civs have multiple cities for a large simultaneous increase/decrease in population.

Regarding Bob’s choice of leader: Decius (Organised/Raiders).

Organised has great synergy, giving cheap Governor’s Mansions (courthouses) and lighthouses (+1 food on sea tiles AND +1 trade route, hammer cost increased to compensate). It also acts as a pseudo economic trait and will help Bob nicely on an Emperor difficulty map that, hopefully, will be large size and toroidal (I’ll explain why I was keen to have these settings later).
Minor note is that Gov Mansions have reduced effect on maintenance (-25%) compared to normal FFH2 courthouses (-40%), but there is a second Forbidden Palace national wonder (called Winter Palace) freely available upon reaching 12 cities, it’s cost is proportionally more expensive than the first.

And now we return to that second trait again, Raiders.
It’s worth pointing out that several players’ choices, including my own 3rd choice, contained the Calabim leader Flauros (Fin/Org). Financial would have been another economic trait, and a strong fit for a civ which we know can be overpowering militarily at certain points in the game.

Why has Bob overlooked it?
I’m sure the answer in his thread is the same as his answer in the planning thread: he wanted to try it out. His civ choices back this up – 3 of the 4 have the Raiders promotion (Amelanchier/Tasunke/Decius vs Einon Logos).
But I’m still going to maintain that Raiders was the wrong choice for Bob, for the following reasons:

• We know the Calabim get highly promoted units.
  Commando is not a hard promotion to acquire: all it requires is Combat IV, ie 26xp.
  Better to take Raiders on a civ whose strength is not highly promoted individual units.
  
  
• Mobility.
  Moroi, Vampires, Vampire Lords all have a base movement of 1. The latter two get access to the haste spell, which can increase movement by 1. They can also take 1 mobility promotion, hence the absolute maximum movement rate Vampires can reach is 3. Engineering is a late game tech, so at 2 road tiles per movement, Bob will be reaching 6 squares into any cultural borders.
  Compare that to a Hippus Raider like Tasunke. Mounted units get a base movement of 3, +1 for Horselord, can get +2 from mobility promotions, and a possible haste or warcry for a total of 7-8 movement rate = 14-16 squares into cultural borders. Now that’s scary!
  

So, I’m criticising Sareln’s choice of Raiders because I don’t think he has the right units for it – only the basic line of mounted units.
I’m criticising Bob’s choice of Raiders because I think it’s the wrong civ to take the trait with – he can easily get commando anyway, plus his best units don’t have the high mobility necessary to take advantage of it.
The only question is can you Vampirise mounted units? I know the Calabim can build them. That could be nasty.
If you want to read a bit more on the Calabim, here’s a nice bite size link (ooh pun).

It’ll be interesting to see if I’m proved wrong about the above.
But either way, I do have an ace up my sleeve: of all the civs in the game, I’m the one that should be least concerned about Commando units.
Why?
Tell you later.

Note to self:
Entropy (Rust, Wither) could be a strong counter to Calabim.
Consider building the Pact of Nilhorn for denial. Collateral-causing vampire giants = bad.

[pocketbeetle]

Selrahc – Illians – Auric Ulvin (Chm/Def/Agn):

Another interesting one.
The Illians revolve around snow/ winter theme, and get a huge number of custom abilities and specific mechanics towards this.
I’ll try and give an overview.

• Auric Ulvin:
  Charismatic (same as Civ4, reduced xp cost for unit promotions)
  Defensive (+10% str, +10% withdrawal to all units inside cultural borders, half price walls/archery range/palisade)
  Agnostic (cannot adopt any of the standard religions – a huge negative, however compensated by being given 3 priests after building a ritual).
  
• If an Illian player is the first person to find a specific unique feature – Letum Frigus, Auric Ulvin gains the Aggressive trait also. Note to self: denial!
  
• Snow tiles provide +2 food. Later on the player can terraform land around their cities to snow by building a Snow temple. Means no other player can use those cities except the Illians.
  
• Gain access to a bunch of Rituals. Rituals are world projects, so cannot be Great Engineered. But there is a wonder (Celestial Compass) which can grant +50% production to rituals, with the enabling tech, Astronomy, coming ~midgame.
  .
  The rituals are [strike](with each step being necessary for the next)[/strike]:
  • Samhain
    Spawns some extra barbarian frostlings on the map. No real benefit to any player, frostlings will attack Illians also.
    
  • The White Hand
    Creates 3 priests of Winter. The only priests an Illian player will get. Kill them to make him cry.
    
  • The Deepening
    Causes unimproved tiles without any features (like a forest) around the world to freeze temporarily. Makes blizzards spawn around the world periodically.
    
  • Stir from Slumber (not a necessary step, has a separate requirement – must have eliminated the final city of 1 civ).
    Creates Drifa the White Dragon. 21str, 3 movement, +50% str in snow? Oops.
    Best not to let Selrahc kill anybody hmmm?
    
  • The Draw
    Reduces the health of all Illian units by at least 50%, halves the pop of all Illian cities, and causes them to declare war on all civs. No positives, but necessary for the final step, which is…
    
  • Ascension
    Summons Auric Ascended. Probably the strongest unit in the game.
    Note that this step also requires the Illian player to have teched most of the tree, so Selrahc can’t just focus on production only and beeline it.
    As a balance factor, an opposing player will receive an item called the Godslayer, which provides a huge bonus to kill any units with the Avatar promotion (ie Auric).
    Sound fun?
    
  
  

No your eyes are not deceiving you, that menu –does- say 60 strength

The Illian palace gives no specific bonus, but a type of mana it provides is Ice. This is one of only two ways in the game to get Ice mana, and having it allows a third level spell called Snowfall in the endgame, which is a collateral causing anti-stack beast.

World Spell: Stasis
Causes 14 turns of anarchy in all non Illian cities. Typically used either a) on turn 1 to gain a leg up, b) shortly after barbarians start spawning in the hope someone has gone a farmers gambit and gets caught with their pants down, or c) in mid/end game right before the Illians invade a player, to prevent them building defence.

Thoughts?
Well denying Selrahc Letum Frigus would be a good first step, as getting a free Aggressive trait is pretty serious in MP.
However early exploration in FFH2 can be difficult, so I may not be able to. Just have to hope Darrell knew about this and made sure the unique feature didn’t spawn right next to them.

I’m pretty sure that Selrahc will try and go for Auric Ascended, based on his themed civ choices, which were: Illians – ritual theme/ Sheaim – AC theme/ Lanun – where he said “But Lanun would have been an Infernal or Mercurian rush civ.”
(His final choice, the Luchiurp, would probably have been a Mercurian rush also, using their worldspell to get early GEngs.)

Am I concerned about the Ascension ritual? Not so much. It requires him to have researched all the way up the tech tree with a leader lacking economic traits in a no tech trading game. Cross that bridge when we come to it.

Of more concern are the earlier rituals – The Deepening blizzards could be annoying, and the Priests from the White Hand ritual (str7 and can summon str 5 Ice Elementals) are very powerful. Combined with stasis they can make a killer rush.

So that’s all of them.
We’re just missing one more.
Who’s that?
Oh yes, me.

Coming soon!

[pocketbeetle]

Pocketbeetle – Cardith Lorda – Exp/Ada (Phi):


Okay, let’s talk about my civ, the Kuriotates.
Their game mechanic/quirk is the trait: Sprawling.

Sprawling gives every city +3 happiness and enables cities to work the 3rd ring, adding an extra 16 tiles of workable land.
The obvious result is more land worked, so bigger cities, thereby resulting in higher production and commerce.
Here’s an example:

Standard BFC vs Kuriotates BFC

Look pretty cool?
It is. There is a downside though.

Kuriotates have a limited number of these megacities, based on map size. Darrell was extremely kind enough to give me a large map size, so that allows a maximum of 4 cities. (Duel size = 2, Tiny/Small/Standard = 3, Large = 4, Huge = 5 cities.)
All cities settled after this limit become Settlements.


Settlements:

Settlements are crippled villages whose purpose is similar to the old Civ 3 colonies: they’re used to claim land and resources with the sole aim of feeding your megacities. They’ll never produce anything and won’t rise above 1 population.

Functionally this effect is achieved by removing all buildings and units from the city production menu and quartering all food/hammer/commerce yields in the settlement, while maintaining the usual rules of 1 citizen eating 2 food etc.
Therefore, for a settlement to ever grow to size 2, it would require said 1 population city to be outputting 12 food (12/4 = 3 food – 2 consumption = +1 surplus). And since a pop 1 city with 12 food/turn will require some serious skillz on the player’s part, most settlements stay stuck on pop 1 for the duration of the game (for FFH2 vets: Sacrifice the Weak to grow settlements to size 2 – discuss).
It is also difficult in the earlygame to expand settlement borders beyond the initial 9 tile square, as you can’t build monuments nor artist enabling buildings.


This does not mean settlements are useless.

Firstly, in order to aid the theme of resource claiming, settlements incur no maintenance costs. [INDENT]On a Noble flat map, that means diddly-squat to a player. On an Emperor difficulty toroidal map…it means a little more, and thus part 1 of my evil scheming masterplan begins to emerge.
It changes the mechanics of expansion a huge amount. To give an example: Bob may have a gold resource located outside his borders that he’d really really like, but can’t acquire at this time because he can’t support the city maintenance cost. Whereas for me, the only cost of gaining that gold resource is the hammer cost and, of equal importance, the loss of city growth/pop that building a settler will cost me.[/INDENT]Secondly, settlements have a reduced conquer value, both to me and to my opponents.[INDENT]A conquered settlement gives very little plunder gold, representing the fact that the Kuriotates treasury is stored in their megacities. Improvements around a settlement are minimal, typically only roads and that which is necessary to connect the resource.
So while an enemy taking a settlement -does- gain a fully functioning city, it’ll be pop 1, no buildings, and often poorly placed, representing the complete lack of interest in food and production which enters my decision making when founding a settlement. {The only rules of thumb are a) Settle on a hill for defensive purposes and b) make sure the resource is within easy reach. If the resource is on the hill, then score!}.

This therefore explains my decreased concern about the Raiders trait earlier – loss of a settlement or two, which by definition are most likely to be on the frontline, will not immediately impact on Kuriotate overall production or commerce.[/INDENT]Thirdly, settlements can start to contribute to research/commerce in the midgame via trade routes (quartered, but can still be worth several gp), shrine income from a founded religion, and through specialists (their output is unchanged). [INDENT]As a result, it can be profitable to set that 1 citizen to work as a scientist/merchant via a civic switch or forced buildings. Wonders which give a free building in every city are one example of forcing buildings, or priests who can insta build temples (seen as balanced due to their equal hammer costs).

Thus settlements which cost no maintenance, earn 2-3gp per turn from trade routes, are running a merchant specialist for 3gp/turn, and are also contributing to shrine income in a holy city, can soon start to pull their own weight, with the only cost incurred being increased ‘number of cities’ maintenance in your megacities, and the inevitable defensive concerns.[/INDENT]Okay too much typing, let’s have a picture.


Eurabatres:

What’s that you ask?
Well the Kuriotates effectively get two unique heros, and that’s one of them.
I’m one of only two civs in the game that get a pet dragon, and may God have mercy on the others if I get to build him, because I won’t.

His stats are:

23 str
3 movement
Hammer cost: 241 (scaled down from 360 in normal)
Attributes: Does Not Receive Defensive Bonuses, Can Move Through Impassable Terrain,
Ignores Terrain Movement Costs, 1 First Strike, Magic Immune, Sentry
Race: Dragon (Fear Immunity, Causes Fear, can Breath Fire, Roar)

He comes quite late of course, requiring the Divine Essence tech, but will happily kick Selrahc’s dragon out of the park.


So, we know Kuriotates are limited in this game to 4 cities, that they get settlements to help them (a good thing) and that they get a kick-ass high level unit.
What else is there?


World Spell:

World Spell: Legends
Provides all cities and settlements with an instant 300 culture, which in quick is worth 2 ring expansions and 20% cultural defense. The synergy of this spell with settlements is reasonably obvious.
Typically you’ll use this spell either:

• Turn 1 to reach an important food resource in your capital’s third ring.
  
• After you found your second/third city to get fast border expansions and get them productive asap .
  
• Mid/late game to expand your settlements’ borders or put cultural pressure on a competitor.
  

The first option is a touch wasteful, but can be necessary if you’ve founded between multiple resources, yet have none in your first ring, and simply can’t wait for the palace to expand the borders.

A general theme that the mod designers of FFH2 aimed for is strong civ -> weak world spell.
This is why both Kuriotates and Calabim world spells are a touch underwhelming, and meanwhile we’re all waiting and wondering when Selrahc is going to fire off his timebomb.
And now we get to the good stuff: Kuriotates unique units.


Unique Units:



The theme for the Kuriotates is Centaurs, thereby explaining the…unorthodox title of this thread :rolleyes:

The serious advantage of Centaurs is that they are mounted units that can receive defensive bonuses.
They are also resourceless, and can use a unique Sprint ability (gives +1 movement, but causes fatigue, where fatigue = -10% str, 50% chance to wear off each turn, cannot Sprint while fatigued).

Consider two players who decide to rush with mounted units early. One goes Hippus, the other Kuriotates.

• The Hippus player gets a free Horse resource from his palace, so as soon as HBR is researched can start to build stables (enables building mounted units in a city, no free xp given). Once stables are built, he can churn out horsemen with 4 movement (3 base + 1 from Horselord) and 35% withdrawal (25 base + 10%).
  
• Compare this to the Kuriotate player, who first off, is likely to tech to HBR faster thanks to a larger capital. He doesn’t need horses nor does he have to build stables (they’re actually not buildable as Kuriotates). Production of Centaurs is likely to be faster, again due to larger city size, and while travelling to the enemy Sprint can be used for the same 4 movement as the Hippus.
  Once there, if those Centaurs manage to fortify on a forested hill near your capital (25% hill, 25% forest in FFH2, + the usual 25% after 5 turns) you’re in seriously deep trouble, as no worker is going to be able to outrun them and they’re going to be hell to dislodge.
  

In short, Centaurs provide another facet to the builder/techer theme of the Kuriotates, namely that they can pull off a mean early rush/choke.

Centaurs go beyond the early game also, and this is where I really commend the mod designers. [INDENT]The Kuriotates have a problem: how do you defend megacities that by definition have to be spread farther apart?
The answer is highly mobile defenders: it’s a really neat and simple solution, that fits well with the civ’s flavour. Base 3 movement + 2 mobility promotions + sprint = 6 movement, = 12 tiles pre engineering, 18 after.
As such, Centaur archers are the bread and butter defensive unit, who can easily keep up with a lightning counter attack to help cover the more offensively orientated Centaur Lancer and Chargers.[/INDENT]Centaurs also benefit from a lack of ‘spearmen’ type units in FFH2.
To my knowledge there is no unit with a ‘+100% vs mounted’ ability. The best I know of, is +50% vs mounted, held by War Elephants and Griffons. Neither are buildable though, and a player will never be able to obtain them in large numbers.
That leads us onto the second Kuriotate hero:


Herne:

Herne is a pretty decent offensive hero. He doesn’t receive defensive bonuses, which sucketh, but he does come with Blitz at level 1, which combines very nicely with Sprint and the high base movement.
It also allows him to go straight up the Combat promotion tree and ignore Drill (in FFH2 Blitz is only accessible via Drill IV).
Only problem is that like Eurabatres he comes quite late, with the Warhorses tech (roughly end of mid-game).


Unique Buildings:

Palace:

The Kuriotate palace provides +1 health (good), +20% War weariness (bad, particularly for a civ with only a few big cities), the types of mana given are Spirit, Water and Sun (meh nothing special).

Tailor:

This is more like it. The Tailor is a cheap, early access (Crafting – a starting tech for some civs) building that provides +1 Fine Clothes, a unique happiness resource for the Kuriotates. Since it’s possible to build a tailor in each city, I can therefore build 4, and have 3 Fine Clothes to trade while keeping one for myself.
But the fun doesn’t end there. The tailor gives in total:

• +1 Fine Clothes
  
• +1 happiness from dyes, silks, cotton (a new resource for FFH2).
  
• +10% commerce from dyes, silks, cotton, ie +30% base commerce for all three. (Multiple sources are not counted)
  

Jeweller:

Functionally identical to the tailor, except coming later on with a midgamish tech, Smelting.

• +1 Jewels (another unique luxury)
  
• +1 happiness from gold, silver, pearls
  (Pearls are a new resource for FFH2, only available to the Lanun. Since the Lanun are not present in this PBEM, this is unavailable to me also)
  
• +10% commerce from gold, silver, pearls to a max of +30%.
  

If properly supplied, those two buildings above can give me a Bureaucracy type +50% base commerce boost, in all 4 megacities.

This is one of the key reasons why you should never trade your happiness resources to the Kuriotates, which in turn is why they’re given the unique happiness resources in the first place – it forces trade! Great isn’t it?
I suspect that Selrahc and Bob may know this, let’s hope the others don’t.


Enclave:

While not technically a building, this is another big one. Enclaves are Kuriotates-only improvements to towns.
After reaching a town, it then takes 40 more turns of working (quick speed) for the tile to reach an enclave, giving a yield of +1/ 0/ 5, with the 5 commerce rising to 6 after the Taxation tech.
Needless to say, adding +1 food to a tile is pretty powerful, and makes cottaging highly recommended for the Kuriotates. It also makes them vulnerable to pillaging however, if the enemy gets that far.



Cardith Lorda (Alignment: Good):

I like the backstory in the FFH2/Civpedia for this, so I’m going to post it here, ripped whole from the FFH wiki:

Cardith truly was a remarkable monarch, Gilcrass reflected as he watched the Boy-King play a game of chess with one of his advisors. Granted, he had the outward appearance of a ten-year-old boy, but he had knowledge far beyond his years. In fact, he had knowledge far beyond the years of most rulers. And he wasn't really ten years old. He'd looked like that since the day Gilcrass had joined the Guard as a young stallion, never reaching puberty, never experiencing his voice break, never growing hair on his chest, never finding an interest in the fairer sex or the temptations of marriage.

Gilcrass felt vaguely content about that. If one was to say that the king did have a love, it was the people of his empire, and his marriage was to his throne. Cardith Lorda devoted all his time to the running of the great cities, the expansion of the settlements, the campaigns against barbarians and enemy states.

He showed no nepotism, no corruption in favour of his family, no "personal favours" to people who had his ear. This had a simple explanation: Cardith was, as far as anyone could tell, an orphan. He had no family history and no-one recognised him as hailing from any famous noble families. The name meant nothing to anyone--Gilcrass half suspected he had made it up.

And still, through force of personality, determination, wisdom and a bit of cunning, Lorda had forged a union out of the fractured principalities and city-states of the Kuriotates in an amazingly short time. The period of fighting and bloodshed had been brief and limited, and after it had followed a new age of power and prosperity for all the Kuriotates.

Gilcrass trotted closer to the couple engaged in their battle of wits. Cardith was winning, as usual. He looked up at the sound of Gilcrass's approach and gave him an affectionate smile. Then he turned back to the board and calmly made a killing move.
Despite all his care, all his calmness and all his good work for the Kuriotates, this cold, calculating side of Lorda, which could seemingly be switched on and off at will, disturbed Gilcrass, although he would never tell the king that to his face.

It wasn't the only thing that worried him. When Lorda was called upon to pass a harsh judgement, fight a campaign or make a particularly unpleasant decision, his voice would subtly change, taking on a low, hissing undertone, and the hard, reptilian glint in Cardith's eyes, so out of place in his otherwise soft, boyish features, would become even more pronounced.

When that happened, Gilcrass was truly afraid.


I’m not familiar with the D&D Fall From Heaven stuff, but it would seem that even the Good guys are actually pretty evil!
Benevolent dictatorships, as Arcturus Mengsk would put it.

So, we’re a demon possessed Boy-King, and the only Good aligned civ in the game, with the Khazad and Hippus being Neutral, the rest Evil.
What are his traits?

• Expansive: Slightly modified in FFH2. Gives +3 health, double production speed of Settlers, granaries and harbours.
  
• Adaptive: Approximately every 75 turns on quick speed, I get to choose a trait. =)
  

First off, Expansive is a great trait, allowing the Kuriotates to quickly build strong health buildings in the granary and harbour. Double production speed for settlers is also huge, given the settlements discussion earlier.

Adaptive is FUN.

• We start off Philosophical, and on turn 70 will be given a choice from a fixed list of traits, which includes all the important ones:
  Financial/Philisophical/Organised/Creative/Aggressive/Industrious/Charismatic, hell even Raiders if I want to!
  
• Choices are varied, and can range from Creative to get easy border pops in settlements, Aggressive if I intend to be warlike, and definitely Financial mid-late game to power ahead in tech.
  
• I also happen to note that there are no-zip-zero Industrious civs in this PBEM, nor any others with Adaptive.
  So I could take Ind and have a sickening advantage on wonder chasing.
  Now where’s my smug smiley? Oh yes here it is.
  

Conclusion:

Just to dispel any overenthusiasm or misconceptions from the start: I’m royally screwed in this game.
I’m playing a builder type civ in a MP game. I have a maximum unit production rate empire-wide of 4 units/turn, and I only know of one possible way to get around that.

Additionally, my amazing megacity bonus is available to the other players also! The world wonder ‘City of a Thousand Slums’ allows 1 city to work it’s third ring just like mine. Even worse, I can’t build it for denial purposes. So someone will find themselves with a quarter of my advantage, with none of the disadvantages.

Finally, we’re playing on quick.
Quick speed doesn’t enhance tech rate or increase production, it lowers costs. It makes techs cheaper and units cost less hammers. That last part is important for the Kuriotates as they specialise in easily reaching 1t unit builds.
Lowering hammer costs for units means that in midgame onwards (if I survive that long) I’m going to start getting a lot of wastage due to overflow rules. C’est la vie.

However, I’m going to put up a good fight.
My main opponents (Selrahc and Bob) have chosen militaristic civs, while my choice is a great big thunking financial/economic civ.
If I survive to lategame, there’s a good chance I’ll be significantly ahead on tech with a brace of wonders.
I should be capable of leveraging that somehow.


Opening strategies to follow later.

[pocketbeetle]

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(Someday)