I had this whole post ready about what I felt was "wrong", but every time I reread it it just sounded like I was ranting, but that's not how it is. So let's try it this way...

I think, as another person mentioned with Create Artifact, that champions come far too late to be useful now. Usually if I see Summon Champion, for instance, Spell of Mastery is available right behind it. I feel like that's very odd pacing, and the reason why is related to nodes/lairs and Sorcery.

I mentioned it before, but I would really like an option to increase the difficulty of nodes and lairs and such. At first, I said for Myrror specifically, but I think it should be for the opposite plane the player is starting on. In my mind, it would be very nice to have the difficulty radiate from the starting cities where the closer they are, the easier they are with a random chance of them being a step or two more difficult than normal, and the further the harder they get. That way, when you're on the other plane, you're up against high count Sky Drakes, Great Drakes, Archangels and so on. Further, it should flip if you're the only one on the plane. So the most difficult plane would really be the one with less wizards on it. If they're even, then flip the table entirely - it's all difficult. Good luck.

Okay, so why? Because by the time you get a champion in most cases (you can get lucky to get one earlier, I know,) there's nothing left to send them at except other wizards. Usually that means without certain buffs on them they tend to die or sit and rot in some city for safety. That feels less like a champion and more like a burden. If you don't have heroism and warlord, it's harder. Fame is, also, fairly time consuming to get high enough that they start coming at higher levels. Those games don't usually end well because of Sorcery.

Sorcery is seemingly creating this additional problem on top of it. Things like Aether Binding causes not just a snowball, but an outright avalanche. You can see it in the history of most games - around 1510 everyone that gets to cast Aether Binding starts to rocket up in power. Everyone without starts to die off. 1510 means that's not a long game. 120 turns in, and you can spend the first 60 turns just building cities. It sounds like a lot of time, but it really isn't. When you have a high sorcery book wizard around, there's a looming danger they get a perfect spell roll for domination - Haste + Invisibility + Guardian Wind + Magic Immunity + Sky Drake. In my 200+ hours of playing, I've seen this combo far too often. It's extremely difficult to deal with, and almost always requires having sorcery books myself. The only thing I haven't really attempted is having Call the Void. The problem becomes you can't work "around" the problem by taking out lesser defended cities because where there's 1 stack, there's another - and it's probably heading in your direction. I mentioned it before, but most full on buffs for stacking gets eradicated because of dispelling wave (Sorcery) so that's out. Creature Binding can take out most high level summons, so that's also a risk.

It really is just not a fun time. I used to target Chaos wizards early. Now I target Sorcery, because they always end up far more dangerous than anyone else. Taking sorcery myself is easy mode. Now I don't even take Sorcery books unless I want a laid back game because it just makes things so much easier, and I think that's wrong.

So .. I think Aether Binding should be moved to a very rare spell, since it's just so ridiculous. That way there's time to actually do something before it snowballs so quickly being uncommon and easy to get. Or... it's benefit should maybe be halved. Something with it has to give, though. In addition, I think if you can be given the option of increasing node/lair/etc difficulty in some fashion, that would great help out the champions problem without doing anything to fame, ruining normal/fair play, etc.

Finally, dispelling wave moves to a combat only spell OR remove the ability for the AI to use it on things it should not be able to see. Either way, you then have a shot at moving in a fully buff army to make a go at it. The AI gets the chance, but the player does not (we cannot cast dispelling wave on things we cannot see!) Clairvoyance would allow them to use it anywhere just like now. That would seem appropriate.

Do you ever find yourselves creating walls of units to block a settler trying to get into your territory? Do you ever 'park' stationary units in spots available to settle? 

It doesn't seem like the opponent knows how to handle this well. It would be hard for an AI to understand something like: if settler changes path X times in a row due to player units, trigger *can you let me pass?* message

Now that the map is finalised, I thought it best to start a fresh lurker thread.

Artificer is an alright retort if you want to go for a hero centric strategy. The half cost on item creation definitely helps make heroes more viable. However, in my experience Create Artifact comes a bit too late. While I understand that the powers on artifacts can be a bit too strong for the mid game, in practice the Rare tier has quite a few dangerous spells to wait on making a set of artifacts, even if you rush the spell. Good artifacts after all cost a lot of MP and tie up your overland skill. In my current Nomad Life + Chaos Artificer game, I found that I only had time to upgrade Theria's accessory with Create Artifact. After that I had to summon Chimeras to protect her while also defending my western front with Marcus, and that ate up a lot of my overland skill. Maybe Create Artifact should be a late uncommon if the powers on artifacts are a balance concern?

This report will be almost all images; I had started writing a separate narrative in a Word Doc, but the mod's stability issues meant that alt-tabbing became an increasingly perilous process, and honestly what I had going wasn't particularly good anyway. 




I started the game off right with a lucky hut pop. 



Captured a barb city.



I like the new EMM events; this one was particularly amusing. 



I was slightly worried when someone beat me to founding the Veil; it meant I didn't have time to putter around collecting random techs for Hyborem to inherit.



Another city capture.



My Warrior was addicted to adopting Goblins.



A torrent of Barbs recaptured their city.  Also, note all of those Disciplines of the Leaves Hafghan is spamming...



Pricey, but worth it for Hyborem to know where to find his first victims quickly. 



For some reason the Luchiurp had founded the Veil. 



Farewell, Lanun!  I could have done a better job spamming Death 1 Adepts prior to abandoning the civ, oh well. 



Spawned in a good location; isolated by land, lots of production. 



The first of many disasters to strike the mortals of the world.



Built the Grimoire, landed this vital tech. 



AC rose fast this game, around one point each time I settled or captured a city. 



Hyborem is collecting evil books the way some collect Goblins. 



Getting ready to invade the Bannor by sea. 



Surprise!  I forgot the check the diploscreen prior to declaring, and found myself at war with most of the goodly civs. 



First blood. 



Main strike force.



Captured Sabathiel's excellent capital. 



First step in setting up a game-long Good vs. Evil conflict. 



The Bannor's main counter-attack.  They were wiped out fairly easily. 



As I said; crunch crunch. 



I forget why I took this screenshot, I guess it's supposed to show off the early state of my core cities. 



Around this time the game was becoming really unstable, and in frustration I stopped taking screencaptures for a while.  I had conquered the Bannor, plus a few Luchiurp cities, and shortly after enforced peace with the Dwarves ran out used my WS to set up a multi-pronged invasion of their territory.  Oh, also the AC hit 100 around the time I finished the Bannor off, but that didn't effect the Luchiurp much since their army was like 90% golems anyway. 



The aforementioned AC 100 event. 



The disasters never end!  I bribed Hannah into war with Varn / Basium, who were becoming rather strong devouring the Illians.  I preemptively moved my kill stacks away from the coast, knowing she would trigger her WS immediately.  Was annoying having to replace many of my tile improvements, though. 



This diplomatic dynamic would define the rest of the game, though the traitor Keelyn would convert to the Order after the Forces of Good captured all but two of her cities.



Finally bringing the fight to the Malakim.  At this point I had three large stacks running around the map, two tearing up the Luchiurp and then this one spearheading the assault on Varn.  He and Basium were very powerful, but their armies were stuck off in Illian land, trying to finish off Riuros. 



Garrim finally sees reason, albeit too late to save himself.  Got a good number of Manes as a result, though. 



Around the time I started capturing Varn's isolated colonies at the margins of his empire, Hannah finally moved in her main stack, and the Clan started speeding somewhat terrifying armies of Ogres, Chariots, PoL, and Mages to the front lines.  I was impressed that Hannah's AI had managed to preserve both of the hero units Qg had so kindly left us, by upgrading them into Armageddon-immune demons. 



Varn finally responds with a legitimate army of his own; I had the initiative though, and cleaned them up with few loses. 



First time I had seen an AI refuse to join a Permanent Alliance; I realized that Hafgan thought he could win the game somehow, and since he wasn't close to domination or the Tower, and couldn't declare on like half the remaining civs for conquest due to being "friendly" with them, that meant he was likely going for a religion win.  Checked the religions tab, and sure enough, the Disciplines of the Leaves he was pumping out every turn had converted most of the world, and only my settling new cities every turn and auto-converting my captures was keeping him in check.  I cued up Ritualists in several cities to start purging the Leaves. 



I'm still not certain why Dain declared on the Clan, but it did grant me an income of around 10 Manes every turn. 



Luchiurp are destroyed. 



Religion screen showing the situation as around two dozen Ritualist builds completed. 



Took this screencapture to highlight that Varn's weird settling pattern left huge gaps between his cities, and some rather nice land between them being abandoned to the barbs. 



Just another day in most-apocalyptic Erebus. 



This guy is one of the coolest units in the game IMO, albeit completely impractical. 



This giant army from Basium was wiped with very few loses on my end; as ever, initiative is everything in FFH. 



And the big man goes down!



Hyborem will be taking that, thank you. 



At some point I decided I needed to stop puttering around and win the game; I started working on the Tower, and around the same time formed a Permanent Alliance with Riuros and liberated his cities in rapid fashion, putting me in position to win via Domination in around a dozen turns.



And then the game ended!


Was I upset that I unexpectedly lost a game I had invested at least a dozen hours in? Nah, I actually laughed when I saw Dain's victory announcement. For one, I could have won by Tower 50 turns prior if I had pursued it with any sort of urgency; that I frittered away time instead with spamming the globe in cities and marching armies across the map was because I was enjoying myself and wasn't ready to end the game. Plus, I had no idea the AI even knew how to win via the Altar; I've never even seen them attempt to do it in hundreds of hours playing FFH and its various modmods, and didn't realize the game doesn't give you any sort of notifications that an Altar win is imminent (unlike, say, the Tower, where the AI will automatically declare en masse on the civ building it as they near completion). Dain was next on my kill list after I finished liberating Illian lands from the Mercurians, but in retrospect he had almost 400 turns to generate Prophets, complete the tech tree, and then build the darn thing, even though from my perspective the game had only been running for a little over 150 turns.

Well, thank to Qg for a fun romp; I've complained about it enough, but I would urge us to just use regular EMM for the next game, since I was having to save multiple times every turn in case the game crashed on me (or, worse, locked up my entire desktop). I'm also certain that playing as the Infernals, with greatly simplified logistics (free gates), peace with the barbs (until I allied the Illians, anyway) and empire management (nothing but workshops and mines!) made the experience of playing on the enormous map much less onerous, though it also came to bite me in the end, in that I didn't feel compelled to wrap things up 100 turns in with a Tower victory.

Penguin Logistics - Delivering Berserkers to your home!

Might be my last Civ4 game, I hope it will be a fun one.

Civ password is qwe

Hello and welcome to beautiful Lithuania!




Table of Contents


King Sventaragis (r. 1066 - 1090)

• Introduction Below
  
• Part One: Final Preparations
  
• Part Two: Greatest Baltic Warrior
  
• Part Three: Carving a Kingdom
  
• Part Four: Defender of Dievas
  
• Part Five: Leaving a Legacy
  

• Interregnum Report
  
• Part One: The Shy King
  
• Part Two: How to Make Friends and Influence Vassals
  
• Part Three: Wars for the Holy Land
  
• Part Four: Uncommon Wealth
  
• Part Five: Lithuania Noir
  
• Part Six: What We Leave Our Children
  

• Interregnum Report
  
• Part One: 4 Kingdoms for 4 Brothers
  
• Part Two: Things Fall Apart
  

• Interregnum Report
  
• The Leper Emperor
  

• Diplomacy: 8
  
• Martial: 15
  
• Stewardship: 11
  
• Intrigue: 3
  
• Learning: 7
  
• Prowess: 15
  

Yes. There will be details now.

Had a bad year, but it's time to start reporting again. The lurkers demand blood and action, and I shall give.

A reddit thread for my future reference: Compilation of lore

Step one: find a good thread title
(Just a placeholder, I'll type more stuff later)

I'm glad we're a team, Civac. Do you have preferences for the voting spreadsheet? Or any fun strategies you want to try? I don't feel strongly about anything except I've been really falling in love with the Spiritual trait lately.