After Tatans admission of failure i felt compelled to show you the end of my attempt

being a complete newbie i never felt comfortable going to war, so basically i just kept expanding while the vamps wiped the good guys out.... except when the good guys are gone who's left to feed on.... i gave up at this point when the vamps declared war on me.

[Note: My game is not yet complete, although it is very close (see below). I will add the final turns and ending stats once I finish the game in a couple days.]

I have been following the two FFH2 PBEM games with great interest, and was planning to try the mod myself. Then this adventure popped up, so I jumped right in. Who needs information, or play testing, or even planning? Let's just dive into the deep end and figure out this swimming thing as we go.

I was cautious early on, and also had some poor luck with scouts and early warriors getting eaten. So it took quite a while to meet my nearest neighbors (Clan, Ljos, Luchuirp), and I did not meet the eastern civs until much later. (I did not meet the Elohim until turn 242!) But offsetting my poor luck with exploring was excellent luck with events and lairs. I got the free prophet event the same turn I accumulated 50 gold, and my starting warrior popped a great engineer from the dungeon near the Clan (the same one Amelia got mistforms from, I think). The warrior was that far west only because he became crazed after exploring a closer dungeon, and then survived a griffon attack -- just random luck. He then survived three more battles on the way home, escorting the GE. This guy is still alive at T259, over 40 XP -- my lucky melee unit.

So I settled the GE and GP in my capital for +5H, +5G, +3B from quite early on. This sizable boost helped me push out to an enormous lead over the AIs in tech and cities, pumping out settlers and founding several early cities while still running 100% science for many turns. I founded FoL, RoK, and OO (the latter two mostly because I could), teched to Priesthood for the PoL to bloom my lands, and started up the arcane tech branches to play around with magic. I expanded to 10 Svart cities, and added a barb city which had sprung up next to Yggdrasil. I did not get as much of the east as I originally wanted (Beeri got the double gems and ivory sites), did OK to the north, and pushed hard to the west (Jonas Endain was boxed in completed by my closed borders).

Orthus was a non-factor: he spawned in the far north and was killed by the Ljos almost immediately. Barbs in general did not cause me much trouble after the early years -- my God-King capital with settled GE+GP had no trouble supplying the military needed to suppress them, and my rapid expansion filled the available territory anyway. I focused almost entirely on a cottage economy with forests, GoN, and lots of adept springing and PoL blooming to maximize the value of my extensive lands. Around T170 or so, I finished blooming forests on every non-oasis, non-FP tile in my entire empire. Not being able to really modify your lands is one of the things I dislike about Civ IV, so I enjoyed the micro of making every tile bloom.

Jonas Endain had been moving a sizable stack of axes around my western border and making threatening noises, so over the following 20 turns or so I assembled a modest force of bronze swords and warriors, PoL with tigers, and illusionists with fireballs and haste. Haste plus Raiders with equal or superior units is very bad news for the AI; add tiger spam and fireballs and the Orcs did not stand a chance. Five cities were added to my empire and the PoL went back to getting the empire fully forested.

Around this time I finally met Alexis as she went to war against the Luchuirp and captured a couple cities which were in range of my hawks. She and the Ljos were roughly tied in tech, land, and power although well behind me (especially in tech). Beeri was a sizable step further behind, and was slowly losing ground. I built up and developed for a few dozen more turns, beginning the process of building the 4 magical towers en route to a planned arcane victory.

Around T220, the Calabim finally reached Feudalism and began turning loose the vampires. Beeri began losing ground rapidly, and at T238 his capital fell with Barnaxus dying as well. I did not want the vampires on my doorstep, so I decided to annex Beeri's western empire as a buffer zone. I had been preparing for a while, just in case, so I had plenty of melee muscle, PoL, and arcane units by the borders. Beeri had lost almost everything he had defending his capital, so I grabbed three cities defended only by warriors in 4 quick turns. First good civ eliminated, T242 -- not likely to win any speed points there! I did have sizable arcane forces, however; I will add the exact numbers with my final stats but it was something like 384 total arcane XP (3 archmages, 9 illusionists, and a bunch of adepts).

I had just beaten the Calabim to Beeri's relocated capital (they would have taken it next interturn), although I had to stretch a bit to do so. Unfortunately, Alexis was outraged and declared on me during the interturn. She threw a ton of units at my forces in Val'ron and managed to wipe them out, including one of my archmages and a valuable golden hammer. :anger: It cost her over 30 units to do so, including 12 vampires, and I immediately counter-attacked and killed another 7 vampires. But she still had a lot of units and I was badly positioned, so I then activated the Seven Pines to force peace. (Halving the AC was a nice bonus, although it had never gotten to 20 -- it has been a non-factor in this game.)

I was well along in my plans for arcane victory -- Elemental and Alteration were built, Divination needed 2 more turns and all mana sources for Necromancy were set up, with 14 turns of golden age remaining to hurry the construction. But the rest of my empire was mostly just sitting around building the odd wonder or building -- I shifted them to full war build up, with plans to exterminate the vampires from Erebus. Not a single bloodsucker would be spared! Units were moved into position, research set to 0% for upgrade cash (over 1200 gpt!), and the Nexus was planned for rapid construction once the Tower of Divination provided Pass Through the Ether tech.

On T259, with the Tower of Mastery under construction and my mana nodes restored to war time configuraion (2 fire, 2 life, 2 body to provide the most adepts and illusionists with haste, fireball, destroy undead), I launched my war of vengeance upon the Calabim! 105 units surged across the border grabbing three cities on the first turn. 4 archmages, 9 illusionists, almost 40 iron-armed champions, 8 PoL, and assorted hunters, hawks, warriors, tigers, etc. began the drive on the vampire homelands. Did I mention the Calabim had declared on the Elohim about 5 turns previously? Terrible bad luck for them to have their main forces so out of position.

So that is where events stand. I managed another golden age with the Mercantilism great merchant (my fourth, all during Tower construction) so the Tower of Mastery shows 32 turns. But with 12 golden age turns left I figure that will actually be more like 42 - 45 -- I should finish just past T300 I think. I could speed this up by replacing Thariss' towns with mines and such, but I just do not want to do that. This game has not been about speed, anyway.

I do not expect to finish off all the good civs -- the Ljos and Elohim are both pleased with me and I should finish my Tower before I could wipe them out anyway. (The Ljos have bronze long bows and their world spell, as well.) So I will end up with the 192 arcane XP scenario points, although this will have to be a shadow game anyway since I have not finished on time.

Thanks to Square Leg for sponsoring this game -- it has been a blast, and a fun introduction to FFH2. I expect I will be playing a lot more of this mod, trying different races and strategies. Hopefully we will see more Realms Beyond FFH2 events.

Just love housekeeping on the drives, I always find something "interesting". Here's a blast from the past, when it was still PC to send season's greetings (1999) :neenernee when the world was to be blown up within the week.



Have a nice one, whether you like it or not

Since I DID play quite a fair a bit of this, I feel obligated to say something...

I actually have a fair bit of FFH experience [I started playing literally a couple of days before people started organizing FFH PBEM1], but my play in this game was total . I botched my early play, and the game never forgave me for it. I got unlucky with some lair results [not as unlucky as poor Amelia, but I still had more than a few lizards running around in my territory], and by the time I had finally managed to get up to four cities around Turn 100, 3 or 4 barb cities had popped up in a ring around me and began peppering me with stacks of like 5 warriors every 15 turns or so [for each city!]. I managed to clear out two of them, but I mismanaged my zone defense and let some barbs raze one of my core cities. I probably could have played out this one, but after that I kinda lost heart. Dark Elves also felt a bit weird to me for some reason, I guess I prefer playing as other races...

Anyway, what I saw of the map was pretty cool, but I just couldn't live with my early mistakes. Looks like I'll have to try out T-Hawk's new adventure; third time's the charm, amiright?

A foreword / forewarning: I'm basically copying & pasting this report from my notes I typed up a couple weeks ago, and working from memory for everything else. My post-facto (I think that's Latin) comments are in [brackets].

Also, I apologize for the horrifically low-quality screenshots. I had quickly pasted them into my Word document report while playing the game, but they evidently barely survived the process of resizing, being transplanted to Paint, and then uploaded online. Hopefully you can still tell whatever is going on.

With that said, the report:

--------------------------

Alright! It’s time to enjoy RB’s first FFH II Adventure!


Alas I must have picked up the wrong save somehow, because I found myself playing not as the lovely and charming Faeryl, but instead as CACAME AWEDMEDE, The Elven King of Dwarves! Sworn to avenge his murdered spouse, Cacame lives now for a single, burning desire- to rid the world of all things Elven!



So yeah I decided that I would add my own variant to the game- I intended to found Kilmorph, destroy any civilization following the Leaves, Good or otherwise, and never build any magic-users (mostly because the scoring system seemed like too much work to keep up with). I was going to try not building any elven units outside of settlers and workers, but that would have left me only with Paramanders, Priests, Soliders of Kilmorph, and the RoK heroes. Which would certainly be doable if the barbs didn’t wipe me out, but very slow without any collateral support.





lol opps sorry Beeri!

[Alas to the best of my recollection nothing ever came of this besides that the assassin murdered my scout]





First of the barb hordes. I was sure that Lizardmen wouldn’t attack workers (they usually just ignore them), but then I later lost two exposed workers to one, so I’m not sure what crazy barb logic they follow. Perhaps once they see a target, they lock onto it and ignore everything else.


Orthus spawned on turn 76 in the middle of nowhere; wouldn’t have been an issue even if he was right next to me, I had about 8 warriors, two cities, and could make a new warrior every turn or so in the capital.


[The barbarians plagued me for the entire game, and were far more of a threat than any of the AI ever posed. Towards the end of the game they were founding cities all over the entire map and constantly spamming me with axemen, chariots, and other crap.]





Awesome! Choosing the later option is basically a free spider / exp. You can even still keep working the mine!


[Seriously, why would anyone ever pay money in this event? Or lose a mine.]





Rawk. Or should I say… RoK? Heh heh alright shut up.


[Was there ever any doubt? The only religions that were ever founded were Kilmorph, and the Leaves & Overlords like 100 turns later. The AI was absolutely appalling throughout. It really needs those obscene Immortal or Deity bonuses to have even a prayer against someone who knows that they're doing.





The itsy-bitsy spider crawled up to Beeri’s way / Ate up all the golems, and generally ruined his day / Beeri cried for help but there was no one there / because he sucks so bad that the Gods didn’t even care.

[The stupid spider then died the next turn attacking a mud golem at 99.9% odds. I did manage to capture another the next turn though, who I this time sent to attack Arendal or whatever her name is. She refused to attack it even with her stacks of hunters, and kept marching strength 3 warriors right next to it, despite having recon units who could spot invisible. That spider lasted me until the end, getting to combat V + Mobility, and eating well over a dozen Ljsofar workers.]





Haha, this was great. I got an event that spawned a grave for me- I explored it, and then immediately got the same event again, on the same tile! EXPLORE IT AGAIN, CACAME HOLDS NOTHING SACRED





Yay free great bard. I stopped founding cities after my third for a long time, but I really didn’t need any others. My capital gets absolutely obscene production thanks to Arete, God King, and forest mines, so I set it to build the Mines of Gar-Dul, and then cranked out a ton of swords to back up Bambur. The barbs and AI civs would found all the cities I’d need.


Turn 170, Bambur has apparently been caught torturing enemy prisoners. I take this as a positive sign.


[Dammit, my minimap got cut off there. Ah well, you've seen the other two cities anyway. I'm sure that I could have easily played this game as an OCC, btw. For the vast majority of the game my capital ended up building everything of importance; the other cities mostly wasted time trying to build markets, temples, elder councils, etc. to justify their own maintenance fees. Also yes, I know that Bambur is a spell-caster, which I promised to not build. He's a Dwarf so he gets a pass.]





Okay, time to end this farce. This isn’t the largest army ever, and it’s certainly not going to win any race for first elimination, but that was never the point. The point is REVENGE! Cacame declares WAR. Death to the Elves! Long live the Dwarfs!

180, Hyrule or whatever falls. I keep it (in retrospect I might as well have razed it. Oh well)

187, Evermore falls, kept. I was held up for a while because Arendal had almost no roads, due to my one of my spiders eating over a dozen of her workers over the course of the last 50 turns or so.

191, Brutti is captured.

194, Dendron burned to the ground

On turn 202, a barbarian lizardman emerges from Clan territory to threaten the former rouge state of Straatus, now a proud beacon of Svartalfar freedom in a barely civilized world! Faced with incontrovertible evidence that the Clan has been harboring terrorist training camps, Cacame has no alternative but the declare WAR!


[This game was won long ago. Once I had iron weapons, swords, and Bambur the massacre that followed was merely a formality.]

Turn 204:







Again, obviously not setting any land-speed records for eliminating the first “Good” civ. If I had wanted to do that I could have just built like 15 scouts and rushed her capital. But where would the fun in that have been?





In 213, Cacame sends a delegation to offer his congratulations to fellow Dwarf King Beeri Brawl for managing to stay alive after almost 100 turns of crushing failure in his war with Alexis. Unfortunately, he forgot to open borders first and inadvertently declared WAR.





The King of Dwarves is dead, long live the King of Dwarfs!


[Beeri Brawl died as he lived: a halfwit who managed to never construct his hero nor use his worldspell.]





Ah crap, that’s what I get for burning too many cities. I’ve been completely mismanaging every city too, so they’re all going to starve down to about size 1. Such is life. Or in this case, death.


[Actually I only lost a couple pop in most towns, even without "Gaurdian of Nature" my cities had a lot of health from the forests, and so much production from RoK forest mines that building some emergency health buildings was trivial.]





217, Jonas goes to the great Warren in the sky. Haha, I’m just kidding, he actually went to Hell.


In 223, Cacame is bored, and so WAR is declared on the Calabim!



-----------------------------------



And I'm sorry to say that this is where my notes, and report, end. I razed about half the Calabim cities without losing any units within the first few turns of the war, but I lost the will to go on before I could wrap up my conquest victory. The turns were really starting to tax my laptop and dealing with the 5,000 new barbarians popping up wherever I razed a city was really trying on my patience. It didn't help that my FFH time was increasingly occupied with PBEM I. For what it's worth, the game was clearly won, and I would have resigned in victory many turns ago if it had been a regular SP game. Alexis had no military left and was fading fast, while Ethne (Ethanol? Methane?) of the Blue Sissies had only warriors, maybe two farm tiles, and no roads. I think she was fighting a losing war with a single barbarian city.


Again, apologies for not playing this one to the end. I've had interest in sponsoring some of these Adventures myself, and I know that it doesn't reflect well if I can't even play the first through to completion. As for some final thoughts about the game, I probably well could have played using only Soliders of Kilmorph and Bambur, if I got a couple warriors out first to deter lizardmen and other riff-raff. I was kind of hoping for the Sidar and Varn for maximum Elven Carnage as well =) Ah well, I had fun regardless! Many thanks to the sponsor for taking the initiative on this!

Express report for now:

The game was very easy because of what can only be described as complete AI incompetence. I expected to have to deal with the Elohim and Ljosalfar world spells, so decided to build economy rather than going for an all-out warrior rush. So Calendar, Mysticism and Education before Bronze Working.

I found Luchuirp last despite them being technically the closest civ (good scouting here, clearly) and they still had warriors on turn 130. I was expecting to need magic support to deal with better defensive units like Slingers, but since they literally had nothing but warriors they were easily wiped out by 5 str Bronze Swordsmen and were eliminated on turn 156. There was a brief delay at this point due to needing to hunt down some mistforms that popped out of a lair with the help of a Hawk.

I then attacked both Elohim and Ljosalfar simultaneously, reinforcing with FoL priests on the Ljosalfar front for healing. Ljosalfar had a mix of hunters and warriors defending. Elohim had only warriors, so were completely destroyed just by 5 veteran swords with March. Both civs were eliminated on turn 185. Neither actually used their world spell, overall a dismal performance from the Good civs' AI.

Well, i haven't completed it, because i got sick of planting forests everywhere :P I had 15 Priests of Leaves running around Blooming, and in the end that just took out the joy from the game with all the micromanagement.

But anyway, in this adventure, i will show you how not to start a FFH game.

Basically, I settled Thariss in place, moved my Scout around, found this, made a worker, started cottaging Forests. The usual. I found a few civs, found the GOOD elves (yeah that's definitely our enemy no.1), and also found some GOOD Dwarves (Public Enemy No.2). Found my second city in an awesome location. Had enough money for the Free Great Engineer (woohoo).

Then disaster struck. Just to show it...



I had opened a Dungeon near the Clan, who spawned a Lizard/2 Mists. The lizard was easily dispatched. The mists....

Look at the turn. Turn 61. I had 2 Mistforms whacking me nonstop (I didn't even know there were 2 at first). I made Warrior after Warrior after Warrior (My capital with God King could produce one-turn Warriors). After 12 turns or so, i finally killed ONE Mist. I was so thankful... i just made another Warrior, moved it down... Your warrior was killed by a Barb Mistform. WAIT!?

Oh crap. Built more more more, built more and more. Oh shit, the Mistform went to my capital! I kept building Warriors, more, more. What was that? 4 Barb Warriors were coming! Oh shit.

Then, on the very turn the 4 Warriors were attacking (I had 4 warriors of my own).



Oh my god. 20 straight turns of Warrior building, and i finally killed the Mistforms. But that set me back so much, it was crazy. I still managed to get FoL first, and cottaged almost everything in sight. Beelined Priesthood, gotten PoLs, and Bloomed everything.



This was my empire at the height of it's glory (Shhh, it's actually at the end of it's life :P)

I got a free Golden Age, and knew how to end it (Mass build Rangers and attack), while Beelining Assassins then Satyrs. At this point, i got bored of the Bloom, so this is the end of my report

P.S: This game taught me only to open dungeon near other people, yeah. And erm, make sure that person doesn't know how to be friendly with Barbarians as well :P

Chapter 1: Beeri Bowled Over

My civ is the Svartalfar, the dark elves. Elves have a couple special abilities in FfH: they can move at 1/2 cost in forests, and they can have forests and improvements in the same tile. This can mean +1 production in a lot of tiles compared to other races. The disadvantage of elves is that their workers have a -20% penalty to workrate. Building cottages, plantations, and mines in forests is slow, and it's even slower with elven workers. I'll need extra workers. Elves also can't build siege units.

Graphically, the dark elf units are mostly voluptuous women in leather bikinis. Kind of hackneyed, but I guess they take after their leader.

My leader is Faeryl Viconia, who has traits of Arcane and Raiders. The Raiders trait gives a free commando promotion to all non-siege units, and gives double cash for pillaging. Between the elven forest double movent and Raiders, Faeryl has great mobility. The Arcane trait gives arcane units an extra free promotion, and faster experience gain.

Warrior rushes are hard to pull off in FfH, since enemy warriors gain a +25% bonus when defending in cities. Bronze warrior rushes, on the other hand, are much more achievable. The AIs have little idea of the value of bronze weapons (free upgrade of +1 strength for melee units in any connected city), and they'll happily avoid researching bronze working for long periods of time. So my plan is to research bronze working early, hook up copper, then start killing people.

Not a bad start position. I go worker first, since I'll be able to farm the wheat and floodplains. The obvious research choice is Calendar, to score the commerce from the riverside incense.



I move my warrior onto the tower to see the lay of the land. She spots another hut, then moves back to garrison Tharis next turn. My scout picks up the huts, with gratifying results:



I meet Beeri and the Luchuirp, a good civ who is destined for destruction.



My scout was attacked by a Griffon. Since they are strength 4 and my scout was sitting on a forest hill, it was a coin flip. Luckily, my scout survived. She'll take a combat 1 promotion and heal in place.



The scout continues a big circle around Thariss, and finds Yggdrasil far to the southeast. This is a really nice special for the elves, but it seems to be kind of out of the way .



I went for Mining early so I could build my third city to claim Copper if necessary. When mining comes in and I realize I have copper in my BFC, my plan looks pretty good.



An event offers me a ridiculously good bargain: a Great Prophet for 50 gold. Since my plan is to build lots of warriors and conquer cities, I'll settle him for +2 hammers and +5 gold. Both of those benefits should be very helpful. In the screenshot you can see my settler and two workers about to found my second city, nicely sited between me and my first victim. I've already mined the copper and built a winery.



Ten turns later, another nice event: free money.



Turn 69, Education comes in and I revolt to Apprenticeship. +2 XP is just what I need.



Turn 76, Orthus spawns, right on schedule. I could really use that axe . Orthus's axe is a transferrable promotion that gives +1 fire strength and Blitz. This is the same as +1 strength against most units; worth more against units that are weak to fire, less against units that are resistant to fire.



Cooperatively, Orthus suicides on a cross-river attack, and drops his axe for me to put to use. Thanks, Orthus! Notice that I'm running max science at a pretty substantial deficit so I can get Bronze Working ASAP.



The game wants to give me more gold! Usually, I'd take the food, but I think gold will be more useful in this game.



I have a stack of bronze warriors ready to start the extinction of Beeri. Unfortunately, the mud golem (Luchuirp worker; has defense of 2) will be destroyed instead of captured (I would love to have some dwarven workers: they have a workrate bonus instead of my elven workers' penalty), but this is a perfect terrain setup for elves: I can reach the Luchuirp capital in two turns because of the conveniently placed forests.





I take Ithralia, heal my attackers and move in some reinforcements, and it's the end of the Luchuirp, on turn 94:

Hey all,

Please submit your reports in the reporting thread!

What's on your wishlist for the perfect OCC tiles?