ffh2 - Adventure 1 - Comments from the sponsor

[Square Leg]

Hello,

Well the game is over and I think that all the reports are in. We a generally good turn out for this game with a few people confessing to have played but not finished in the closing thread also.

I have stolen this pic from Dantski of the start:



There are couple of things to note about the start - It was designed to be pretty awesome! You don't get too many starts with plain river incense, Wines, plenty of food (not AH food) gems and reagents all in reach and to boot, Yggasdral was in the back lands. I placed it there as a bit of a foil really since no one is going to be destroying good civs early doors if they stretch to found an early city next to it.

The jungle belt formed a nice natural boundary to the north and limited expansion to a certain extent although there was some nice land near the Dwarves with double cotton in a nice river valley.

I tried to add a few forests in the back lands but didn't want to go silly. A few of you may have noticed this: (Thanks Reverend!)



Whoops - there were also two roads to nowhere. One down near Yggasdral and the other was near the Clan, but that one was probably absorbed by the Clan before it was noticed. These were created when I was testing various options. I had put Yggasdral a lot closer initially and considered putting a barb city there to cover it. It just meant that gangs of warriors came real early and pissed me off! So I deleted the city and moved the tree... I forgot about the road...

Lastly - there were a lot of mana nodes around to play with if the player so desired.

On the difficulty - Monarch... yeah - The game was designed to appeal to as many as possible and I had toyed with the idea of having two games at different difficulties. (Monarch and Immortal). In the end going with one was the right decision but maybe, just maybe it should have been 1 higher. Meh.

Moving onto the Civ selection's... I chose the Svarts for one reason - I had been playing them a lot recently! They also fitted nicely with the theme of Evil vs Good. You can go FoL and then later go to Council of Esus (Which no one did actually) or just run FoL. (RoK Bob! ) You can summon Hell (Reverend) or you can stomp with a warrior/axe rush (DaveV). You are fairly safe from the barbs with the sinister trait on your recon line units (Scouts are often best used aggressively were possible) and the palace give reduced WW.

As for the other civs:

Clan - I chose the clan because they are bad neighbours - I didn't realise how much they sucked in this game until the reports came! Size 1 and 2 capitals late in the game... yeah - their start was pants but that was just lame! They were placed near the player to deflect barbs and create an interesting early game.

Ljolsofar - obviously they took the piss the most in the age of ice so getting revenge against them was priority number 1! Also - I thought that they would be a good candidate to found FoL if the player dillydallied... No Alexis seemed to get there first! How the Vamps and FoL synergise is beyond me! Their world spell would have been cool to see and they build a lot of archers which can be difficult to get through - especially without siege (which as the Svarts you cannot build). It seems that although having a reasonable start - they never really got going in many peoples games.

Lurchiurp - They were prey really - powerful late game but a bit weak until they get to Wood Golems at least. Their world spell however creates a golden hammer in each city that can be settled as an Engineer or used on a unit for +1 strength... a nice prize if you can wait for them to fire their world spell before killing them!

Elohim - They were bait also although for the Calabim more than the player it would seem! In every test game I played the Calabim attacked the Lurchiurp. Every single one. In most of the other games reported they went for the Elohim... They were weak and some of the comments in your reports explained why - their start was poor. I imagine they expanded to 3 cities before they could chop the forests and then stagnated their economy on too many warriors. Oops. Their world spell was meant to be a frustrating one for the player.

Calabim - Late game threat - Once all the good civs were gone the Vamps were going to be strong. Ad hoc found this out with a fantastic screen shot:



Seriously though - 124 priest of leaves and only 19 Vampires????? Had that been the other way around that stack is a lot more scary!!!

Anyway - so that is why the game was what it was but one final note - Had this game been played on Immortal - a lot of the features and quirks (mana nodes, world spells etc) would have been in play in a lot more of the reports. (I like to think so anyway!

As for my game - I didn't finish! I played that many test games and fannied around with various settings that I got a bit fed up with it all! I had managed to eliminate the Lurchiurp with the help of the vamps and was moving on the Elohim when managing everything was taking a long time. I had created Yvain who is absolutely awesome by the way!

[Amelia]

Blah, 124 PoL and 124 Tigers are far more impressive then 50 vampires =P

[Ilios]

Thanks again for organising this Square Leg! Looking forward to another FFH Adventure.

[ad hoc]

Thanks Square Leg, this and the FFH PBEM have enthused me to play more FFH

and i'm keeping the save with the 124 PoLs and 19 Vamps until i feel brave enough

[Dantski]

Blah, 124 PoL and 124 Tigers are far more impressive then 50 vampires =P

Financial advisor says otherwise

[Square Leg]

Yeah - Spectre summon's don't cost maintenance and they are better than tigers any day - I had a game where I had 6 Death mana available for strength 9 summons..........

[The Reverend Doctor]

Echoing the thanks for the game Square Leg.

FFH has definitely extended the shelf life of CIV 4 for me, and I'm glad it's getting some love here at RB.

I think it was a good decision to make a powerful start. Helps people new to the game have a good shot and gives veterans the freedom to explore any strategy they want.

[uberfish]

Yeah thanks for the game and sorry about the skeleton report, I played the game at a very fast pace and was rather disappointed when my Swordsmen destroyed everyone so easily.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the game, Square Leg. It was a fun introduction to FFH.

Yeah, the strong start and abundant mana nodes were appreciated. Not that I have much experience as to what makes a strong start in FFH. I suspect I will be playing future games and complaining about the starts, after having been spoiled with abundance here.

The Clan really just did not develop much in my game. Similar to others' reports, their capital was at size 2 well into the game (like T160). Part of the problem was that in my game the Clan cities were horribly placed. Their capital had very little food, and once I conquered their lands I found that several good resources (horses, clam, reagents) were outside the BCF of any of their cities. Was the Clan capital already founded at the start, as ours was?

The Ljos in my game did a pretty good job, expanding throughout their area and claiming everything down to the jungle line. I did not push as far north as some others, so the Ljos had a lot of cities and were in second plan in score and tech (just ahead of the Calabim). If not conquered early, they seemed to do OK.

The Luchuirp got eaten by the vampires after a long war, but they did expand out to six cities at their strongest. And they used their world spell at that point, so the AI did OK there. I did manage to claim 2 of the golden hammers and brought them back to Thariss as engineers. Is there a way to split them off a unit, other than by deleting the unit? I could not find one, but was probably being a total noob and just missed it. Anyway, they got to wood golems and built Barnaxus, but he never got more than maybe one promotion before the vamps killed him.

The Elohim did nothing in my game, as in many others. I guess the forests just strangled their development once they expanded enough for maintenance costs to kill their research. That is certainly easier to do in FFH than in regular CiV.

The Calabim did pretty well in my game, teching to Fuedalism for vampires around T210 or so. They were just behind the Ljos in score and tech, although they had a lot more military power.

I found it interesting that as of T260, the only AI civ to research KotE was Beeri. And as a result of losing his war, he never built a single adept (and I was hawk scouting him regularly to keep an eye on his war with the Calabim). Vamps do not really need it I guess (although at least developing enough to build some Death nodes would help them a lot), and Elohim and Clan never had the economy/time. But I was surprised the Ljos did not. Does the AI know how to handle developing arcane units and using spells for improvement and war?

I will add my voice to those hoping for another FFH adventure here at Realms Beyond. This was a lot of fun.

[Cromagnumpi]

Apologies for the Necro on this thread but I decided to try out the FFH2 adventures since discovering RB and joining a PBEM game. I've had a blast in this one! (side note FFH2 Adventure 2 was a breeze due to the weird only facing hunters bug).

I wanted to RP this one a bit more so I made a goal for myself of Always being at war with the Ljos and generally only being at peace with all other civs as long as it suited me. I felt that since the recon line is where the svarts get the most bonuses I would try to tech that and Council of Esus as my main goals. Early hunters helped me keep the Ljos from expanding and tanking their economy (though in the late wars when I was paying less attention to them they apparently jumped to the tech leader position). With Nox Noctis, assassins and the Svarts world spell the AI got picked apart slowly. I'd simply mass assassins near the border and feed my troops experience every turn. The Calabim were the leaders in my game and when they declared on me after we each took the Luchiurp cities I saw why. Huge stacks of Vamps, Catapults and Chariots. My response, "cool take that city this turn, then I'll eat all of your troops and take it back every turn."
I think I won the game when I killed a particularly large stack and claimed the axe of Orthus from the Calabim. Since I didn't really focus on the spell line until really late in the game I don't think my magic users had much xp (though I tried to feed them later with the help of Alazkan's reflection).
Great fun and it helps make me try out the higher difficulties. Thanks a ton for setting this up!