Hey guys, figured I'd welcome myself to the community. I used to play Civ 4 back in the day with my friends over LAN, I recently got it again and have been playing against AI for a couple weeks now. I tried to go online to try and find some games and I found out that gamespy isn't a thing anymore (way late to the party, I know) and that's basically how I ended up finding this great site. Obviously I'm a complete noob with what you guys have going on here but I managed to get all set up to start playing Civ 4 with you guys (at least I think I'm all set). I want to try out a Pitboss, I already posted it over there on the pb38 thread (hope I'm not too late!). I'm hoping maybe some of you can show me the ropes on how everything works around here, it's still all a bit confusing to me. If anyone wants to set up a quick pbem with me some time in the recent future I'd really appreciate it to be able to start getting the hang of things and relearn how to play against real people.  Thanks!

Hadriex's last few games were quite interesting so I guess it's worth discussing them.

First he played Nature and was way ahead. Here is the last part : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXe5A7piGFM
This was still in the old research system and shows fairly well what the problem with that system was. Despite being far ahead, already researching very rares, the Myrran wizard got very rares before he could summon more than 1-2 gorgons...
This was also the game that started the Spell Binding nerf discussion which didn't really go anywhere so far - right now we are at the "maybe we need to replace it with a new spell that has a similar effect, as all nerfing attempts failed" position. However after rewatching this video I'm pretty sure this game is a horrible example of Spell Binding being a problem. He entered a war with the Myrran wizard and did not produce any troops whatsoever in his 25-30 city empire. Literally, he played for two hours with only a single city building units. That's just incomprehensible for me - how do you fight a war when you don't have soldiers? Then he attacked the other Arcanus wizard, the only person keeping the Myrran from conquering the entire Arcanus plane. Finally, the moment he was able to summon Colossus instantly, he conceded the game.
I can't help thinking Spell Binding isn't the one to blame for the result. If anything, the psychological pressure from fighting Sorcery wizards might be at fault. He didn't even try attacking Myrror.

Next game didn't last long : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Z0skPAFWU
The interesting part here is our conclusion in the comments. Basically, we concluded the land size settings break the game. In most 4x games, when you increase land size, the default number of opponents go up. So "territory/player" remains the same - your strategy can remain the same except the game does not end after you beat the first few enemies, it keeps going and going and going until you beat all of them. But in CoM you can't raise the number of wizards and there is no game mechanic that prevents expansion (not that I would ever want one). Which means "territory/player" is higher. Which means you can't play the same way - you must overextend to stand a chance, otherwise you aren't claiming the territory meant for you, and fall behind. But unlike the AI, you often don't have the resources to overextend, and protect yourself. In other words, the game is not balanced for larger landmasses - they are significantly harder to beat then "fair" land sizes and literally forces you to play an early game race and strategy.
This is a serious problem but I don't think there is a solution for it. If the AI slows down on building settlers, they are just throwing away the game - the human will claim the extra territory instead and win through sheer economy force.

Finally, the third, ongoing game : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWBDdOlRJKs
Here I have one thing to ask...
Why do people think housing is a good investment (even in a pop 10+ city that could produce 30+ hammers otherwise)? Is it supposed to be one? Is the game mechanic wrong? The addition of Sawmill most definitely made it less efficient relatively than in the original game but even there I doubt this works past pop 10.
Hadriex is a fairly experienced 4X player. Why would he think Housing is a good way to prepare for a war when his entire army consists of 6 units? Am I overestimating players? Is Advanced seriously too hard for them? I mean "war = need soldiers" should be common sense for any game, 4x or not.

As is, there is no difficulty level where the AI gets no resource advantage but does not hold back on its strategy and has a Myrran wizard. Maybe one is needed? Something in between Normal and Advanced? I thought Advanced with the small 10-30% AI advantage is perfect for this role and AI with 0% is a joke...

Oh one more thing. I believe this game actually was one of those where the AI had sprites in his capital and got beaten by nagas from another AI. I don't think anything can be done to prevent this except maybe changing strategic combat to have something that works like a fortress lightning.

Does Orihalcon gets destroyed by building a city on top of it? I am pretty sure coal/iron/adamantium doesn't. But I just built a city on orihalcon and F1 doesn't show it anymore...

How often do you pick Tactician if you have already picked warlord?

Hey all!  I've set a challenge for myself that will take some time, and to be honest I need all the help I can get.  Here's the criteria...

Objective - Beat the game on Expert difficulty, Fair land size, 4 opponents with every default wizard.
- Race is random pick without replacement (i.e. if I get Halflings with one wizard, the next wizard I play can't randomly chose Halflings until all other Arcanus races are played)
- Power, minerals, and climate are randomized each game
- Revolting Raiders and Rampaging Monsters turned on
- Save scumming is allowed (because I'm a scrub)

So far I'm still stuck on the first wizard and have been for quite a while.  I got Tlaloc/High Men on Large/High/Fair/Wet and I'm on my 7th attempt.  All the other ones I got stomped pretty hard and realized I needed to learn more about how to optimally play the game.  After watching a few videos of Seravy and Hadriex I realized what I could do to get better starts and now I've found myself in what I hope is a winnable position.

2 of the 4 wizards are dead already.  One of them was a Lizardman race that spawned somewhat near me; Maniacal personality helped because he prioritized keeping his home base stocked with Ghouls while he sent out tons of undefended expos for me to capture with War Bears and Sprites early.  Basically kept him one one base for most of the game while building up his cities as my own and getting to mid-game.  Used Sprites to take nodes/lairs/dungeons that couldn't fight back, and ended up getting a nice power boost.

The other wizard got killed by Raven, who is Aggressive/Pragmatist with 5 Nature/6 Sorcery and Conjurer.  He went out of control with spawning War Bears and Sprites, but spent most of the game cleaning out the other wizard.  I have Detect Magic up and see he's just now gotten Giant Spiders and is using that as his summon of choice, while I have many more high-tier summons (Night Stalker, Great Lizard, Cockatrice, Shadow Demons, and Chimera).  We are now at war.  He has 7 (undeveloped) High Elf, 6 Barbarian, 2 Lizardman and 1 Gnoll cities to my 9 Lizardman, 3 (developed) High Men and 1 Barbarian cities.  I'm cranking out Paladins/Magicians from my High Men cities and Javelineers for defense at the Lizardman ones.  Raven's mainly using Berserkers/Sprites with Resist Magic, which I'm doing OK against.  Raven's also picked a fight against the Myrran wizard somehow and even managed to banish her once, but she came back and is now earthquaking all his capitols constantly, which is nice.  I don't see any breached Towers so I'm not quite sure how he did that.  Also, I found a Chaos book and a Death book so I'm currently 5 Nature/7 Death/1 Chaos with Cult Leader.  I have Flame Blade/Warp Wood/Wall of Fire/Chimeras in the Chaos tree researched. Year is September 1411 (not sure how many turns that is)

His army strength is like double mine, but I'm positive it's because he has loads of berserkers and low-tier nature summons.  Power production and Spell power we're neck and neck. I have higher quality units and spells for sure at this point (400RP a turn) so I think I'm in a good spot, but I'm afraid to mess this up.  So I have some questions...

1) How should I proceed?  Should I turtle up and get 9 Shadow Demons/Chimeras, or should I try investing in buffs for my Paladins? (I have Flame Blade/Wraith Form/Resist Elements/Cloak of Fear).  Or should I use Enchant Item to get my Agility/Charmed/Lucky Mystic X more god-like?


2) Is there any way to increase overland casting skill aside from heroes in the capitol?  I feel like upping the SP only seems to impact combat casting skill, but maybe I'm mistaken.  Raven seems to be able to summon 3-4 Sprites/War Bears a turn though and it takes me 2 turns to summon 1.  Currently my skill is 60.  

Thanks in advance!

So in my all-white high elves (Expert) game I conquered Arcanus rather easily with endurance+holy armor / bless / true sight Dragon Turtles. Almost ironic how it turned out with the 1st neighbor wizard plotting down a lizardmen town next to my start very early.

I'm reaching very rares as I mop up the rest of Arcanus. No Towers are breached yet, and there is a sorcerer in Myrror. He has dark elves with mostly (or all) warlock garrisons. Can't for the Life of me (pun intended) figure out how could I take him on. Buffed turtles stack should actually be able to take warlocks - but fat chance those buffs could survive dispel wave. High elves don't seem to have anything strong enough.

Any advice? Should I try to race to SoM, but he has sage master so likely I have already lost that race?

Only things I can think of are - again ironically - blue. Or dark elves. Like invis and sky drake.

I'm pretty sure this is the place for general EitB talk, and Furball's Civ4 thread inspired me to just put all my thoughts in one thread, because there doesn't seem to be a lot of FFH EitB action going on. I've been on a Civ4 kick lately, remembered how awesome FFH2 was, and decided to pick it up again. I'm using the EitB v12, and I like most of the changes, especially incorporating the better AI mod. A lot of cool strategy games suffer from the computer being unable to play them. Endless Legend had that problem when I picked it up for a bit, hopefully they fixed it.

Map Configuration
I typically play on Large Pangaea/Fractal/Big_and_Small maps with an AI removed on Monarch difficulty at standard speed. I have aggressive AI, no vassal states, no tech trading/brokering, and no Acheon ticked as options. I've been thinking of ticking the difficulty up a bit.

 I actually prefer small maps, but I don't think the AI can play them well. I'll talk more about it in a bit, but getting a good start in FFH2 seems to be more important than in BTS Civ4. Since settlers are so expensive, it's easy to fall behind in the land grab. On a small map, REXing can be enough to choke several AI to a couple cities, and then the game is over on turn 110.

 Likewise, I like Acheon as a mechanic, but the AI cannot deal with him. He chokes nearby AI to a handful of cities that I can pick off.

 Although, from a few test games, it seems like the AI does a lot better on maps where there's more room to expand. Even if I REX, I can't choke the AI out, because there's too much territory to grab. They will eventually get some cities and a game will develop beyond bronze weapon warriors.

Thoughts on Staring Locations and Early Worker Techs
 In other words, unless you're an elf, get out the fucking forest. Seriously, forests are a blight in the early game, but the super settler makes up for it. I've noticed that in the games I've played, the best thing I can do early is move my super settler to a nearby hill and see what's out there. Forest chops are inefficient and teching to mining delays expansion too much. I've done better in games where I've spent 3 to 5 turns moving my settler to a nice river valley than settling in the middle of a forest. Forests are practically unworkable for the first 50 turns of the game.

 Actually, even then, revolting agrarianism and spamming farms on river grassland/floodplains appears faster than mines for building settlers and workers. The farms allow the capitals to grow fast to work more farms which translates into more production sooner. And really, that's why the forests are so bad. The capital stagnates, and they provide too much defensive cover for barbarians.

 Has anyone else that experience or am I just approaching forest starts wrong?

Early Tech Choices and Bronze Warriors
I've been trying to do different opening tech builds, but I always keep coming back to this one:

Agriculture -> Calendar -> Exploration -> Crafting -> Mining -> (Ancient Chants) -> Bronze Working/Carnivals

 I only take ancient chants if I'm not playing a creative leader, and I grab bronze working before carnivals if I have copper or jungle that needs to be chopped. If I do, I grab carnivals next for markets to offset maintenance costs. Afterward, I'll think about grabbing animal husbandry and hunting if I have those resources to hook up, but part of me thinks I should go for education/code of laws or mysticism for apprenticeship/aristocracy/god king before them.

 That's something I've been wondering, how soon should I go for aristocracy? God king feels like it'd be worthwhile for producing warriors/infrastructure, but the production doesn't apply to food, right? So taking it early wouldn't help me push out more settlers/workers.

 My first war always seems to end up being a bronze warrior/axeman attack on the AI who settled next to me. I'd like to try using early recon/religious/mage/mounted units instead, but all of those seem inefficient compared to bronze warriors. They don't require me to research any non-economic techs and cost fewer hammers. I can simply overwhelm the AI with numbers that are 25% stronger theirs. If their defenses are especially strong, apprenticeship bronze axes are usually enough to crack the top defender and clean up. More so if the civ has an ability or spell I can use early like Grigori adventurers or Hippus's world spell.

 Has this been your guys' experiences or am I just doing it wrong?

Recon Units
 Speaking of doing it wrong, I don't get how to use recon units. Do you build them early? Hunters have the ability to capture animals and what not, but the penalty to city attacks makes me question if they'd be of any use. Are they more like a supplement to an early army? The only advantage they seem to have over bronze warriors is that they have 2 moves. Are they meant to be a replacement for people who don't start with copper nearby?

 Even later into the game, the recon techs seem lackluster compared to the metal ones. Metal brings stronger units and better production. They reveal resources for better tile yields, strengthen existing units, make workshops better, and grant forges for more production/happiness. Off the top of my head, the recon techs give hunting lodges and that's it. Feels like everything related to the recon line is less bang for my time. Am I thinking of this the wrong way?

Happy New Year!

I played Werewolf (actually, Mafia).

Roster:

Ichabod
TheArchduke
Bacchus
Emperor K
Quagma Blast

Variant:

*We play as Hojo Tokimune of Japan.

*We can only build districts with a discount, never at full cost (clarification: Japan's half cost districts are always allowed, since they are already discounted).
*By the end of the game, we need to have built at least one of every district that exists in the game.
*Spaceports, aqueducts and neighbourhoods don't receive discounts and work in a different way than the other districts. They are allowed without discounts.
*We must achieve a peaceful winning condition.
*We can't keep captured enemy cities with districts, since we don't know if they were properly discounted or not.

Settings:

*Emperor difficulty
*Small map
*Continents map

District Discount Formula (by Cornflakes):

C = total number of completed districts (regardless of type)
P = placed districts of the specific type in question (e.g. Commercial Hub), this includes the sum of completed and uncompleted districts of the specific type
A = available districts to build, which is based on techs discovered. (e.g. Astrology + Writing + Bronze Working = 3 available districts)

For a specific district type, the discount is available only if both of the following are true:
1) C>=A
2) C/A > P

Trivia:

*The literal translation of the expression that means stingy in portuguese is "Hard Bread". "Hunger Nail" is also pretty common.

So in anticipation of the start of the new game, wishing you Happy New Year all, guys (and gals if we have any around). As always, GL;HF in the game and in life.