FFH Adventure I - The Reverend Embraces Evil

[The Reverend Doctor]

Being confident I could beat the AI on Monarch... I thought I'd approach this game with a strategy that fully embraced the idea of killing all good civs and offered something I'd never done before: Summon Hyborem!!

For those who for some reason are reading my thread and are new to FFH instead of reading the far better ones explaining FFH.... Hyborem is a civilization that you can't pick at the beginning of the game. If you found the ultimate evil religion (Ashen Veil) and research a certain tech, a race of demons sets up shop somewhere on the map. You have the choice to play as them, abandoning whatever civ you started as. Found them early enough and they can kick some serious butt as they have a few awesome heros and start with iron.

Not to mention they don't need food to grow (population is added by some sort of reborn spirit units that are born in your cities when you kill things), and can ignore health and happiness concerns.

ANYWAY....

My game started normally enough. Teched calendar and crafting to improve those juicy incense and wine tiles at the capital.

My scout and warrior got about 100 gold from huts and met the good elves and the Luichirp before both dying. Two good civs near us... who to kill first (hint: neither).

Ran into a 'unique' feature soon into the game.... a rare form of snow-growing reagents!


Guess no one got to use those.... at least there is another source right by the capital.

Got another exploring warrior out who met the vampires in the far east and the clan of embers right next door to the west. A warrior also spotted this scary early game battalion of goblins:


This is only turn 59.... those could be a real nuisance!

Here's my empire after expanding to a second city:


My tech order (not a dedicated beeline to Ashen Veil, but not a whole lot that was extraneous either) was Calendar, Crafting, Ancient Chants, Mysticism (god kind and elder councils), Philosophy, Way of the Wicked, Knowledge of the Ether, Mining, then whatever founds Ashen Veil and next what summons Hyborem (Infernal Pact?) Sorry my notes got sloppier and sloppier.

By about turn 100 I was out to 3 cities, and I'd only barely add a 4th before summoning Hyborem. Popped a GSci and saved him to build Stigmate of the Unborn (the Ashen Veil shrine, that adds beakers instead of gold for each city following it.)

Turn 130 and AV is founded in my third city. Here's a picture of it before the founding:



Kill some turns defending barbs and finally on turn 159.....



When you found Hyborem you get the capital (randomly?) located somewhere, Hyborem himself (the scary dude in that picture), a worker, 2 longbows, 2 champions, and imp (adept), and a settler. I started right beside the dark elves I abandoned and declared on them immediately.

Why declare on the civ who might be my allies? Two main reasons:
1. We're gonna kill everyone anyway.
2. They, usually, have the AV holy city and shrine. Which we definitely want as every city we capture automatically gets AV spread to it upon catpure.

Obviously I won't break anyone's record for killing a good civ as I kill two evil ones first! After taking back my lands from the dark elves, I turn on the Clan of Embers who are next door and still defending with warriors. My force is only about 5 units, but they pack quite a wallop. Especially after adding Rosier the Fallen (an AV specific mounted hero)

My lands after defeating the bad elves and the clan:



Before taking on the good elves (the first good civ to fall...) I teched to priesthood so I could build the awesome AV priests, Ritualists. Awesome because they come with Ring of Fire which damages all units in an adjacent square, the ultimate stack busters for that spell and useful in that they have the medic promotion (which is much rarer in FFH.)

On turn 200 I complete the Prophecy of Ragnarok in my old capital. Now each unit built there will add to the armageddon counter. I timed it pretty well to hit 30 right as a declared on the Luichirp so blight would devastate their cities.

Finally on turn 232 I killed the first good civ, the good elves. I lost my starting imp and didn't even build another, so I didn't have an adept to have experience on. If ritualists count I had one that had gotten to 28 experience.

By the time I killed the Luichirp on turn 258 they had adopted Ashen Veil so weren't even good anymore. Darn... and all that's left is the vampires. (I see from other threads the Elohim were in the game, in mine the vampires killed them, I only got to kill one good civ all game )

The war with the vampires was pretty long and boring. Grew my cities a lot, built ritualists and diseased corpses (and eventually the beasts of agares). The vampires did have their namesake unit, but not enough to fight off my stack.

So the vampires are down to one city and I'm closing in hit enter on turn 297 and.... Religious Victory?! What?

I really don't even know how that works. All the cities had Ashen Veil present, is that it? Hahahaha. So I only got to kill one good civ all game and I end up winning by religious victory. Not exactly what I had in mind playing as Hyborem.

Victory on turn 298, still no adepts but again, if ritualists count, I had one at 58 experience.

The top 5 Cities at the end:



And the city screen, check out those populations that I didn't have to worry about feeding! Ignore what they're building, I'd already won by that point and pretty much clicked anything to move on....



All in all a fun game, thanks to the sponsor. I don't think I played Hyborem as well as possible, but I had fun doing it for the first time, even if it got boring when victory was a certainty slogging through so many vampire cities. And who here has even ever had a religious victory? That was novel for sure.

Thanks for reading! (Think I put too many spaces between all those sentences, the list of one line statements looks kind of odd)

[Ilios]

Haha, religious victory while playing Hyborem, nice!

[Rowain]

I'm sure the elves have died out of shock seeing the green lands turning into hellish red

[Square Leg]

I'm glad someone chose to go down this route so thanks Reverend Doctor!!!

I fully understood that going on Monarch would be fairly easy for those who have played ffh before and so this was a really nice way to showcase to other ffh players a feature that is completely unique to the game - Hell on Earth!!!

Very well played and thanks for the report! (Those reagents were an error! on my part! )

[DaveV]

Now, that's taking the Evil vs. Good theme to it's logical extreme! Don't just kill them, but give them hell on earth (or Erebus).

Very nice game and report!

[Dantski]

Ahh you also got a religious victory although under somewhat different circumstances

nice game, one day I'll play as one of the summoned civs

[Selrahc]

nice game, one day I'll play as one of the summoned civs

IMO Hyborem is by far the more fun and more straightforward of the two, so I'd try him first.