[PLAYER THREAD] Brian's Awesome Thread of Awesomeness

[mackoti]

The Khazad are a dwarven society with a siege and recon speciality, kind of schizophrenic but definitely workable... And their other units aren't nerfed either.

The Khazad have a bunch of crippled unit lines, but it's by having them flat-out prohibited instead of getting weak versions so it's hard to realize because unit bans are only listed on the Pick Civilization screen.

Rangers are banned, so Feral Bond does literally nothing except enable you to further research Animal mastery for Myconids. Horse Archers are banned, so Stirrups loses lots of value too, but at least you can still build Shadowriders if you go Esus. Mages and Archmages are banned, so not much point going up the Arcane line with only Adepts. Dwarven Shadows and Dwarven Druids are nice to have, but they both come on very expensive techs and are limited to 4 each so they're mostly for playing around in SP.

(They also lose access to Longbows and Marksmen, but they can still make Arquebuses, and Crossbows too if you're willing to eat the blank Bowyers to get to Machinery.)

Unless the EitB meta has changed, I don't think we're going past tier two this game.

Last game we fight with mages, dwafen druids, asasins, chariots, priests.game before as well there were tier 4 and  even beastmaster, the game before same so i can say last 3 games n wich i played tier 3-4 were presents.

[shallow_thought]

Last game we fight with mages, dwafen druids, asasins, chariots, priests.game before as well there were tier 4 and  even beastmaster, the game before same so i can say last 3 games n wich i played tier 3-4 were presents.

Interesting; thanks for that. I note that Dwarven Druids are more accessible in EitB than base FFH. They are probably a nice-to-have, however: I suspect that sinking beakers into Smelting / Iron Working / Blasting Powder for as many cannon as you can afford (and iron en-route) is better than Fanaticism / Commune.

I've had a quick run-through with Arturus and looked up some threads where other people have played the Khazad. Auro won with them back in 43, and DaveV had a go more recently. Consensus seems to have been to ignore the vaults mechanic, spend gold as normal and just put up with the happiness malus. However, they both had Kandros Fir, and I have a nasty feeling that AGG/FIN is strictly stronger than ORG/IND.

That said, I do like the IND + dwarven combo for cheap, fast workers. It offers a chance to really snowball, particularly if starting with a few improvement techs already in the bag. My tests suggest that you don't get extra units in Discovery - if you do get a free worker, it would blunt the advantage. The rest I'm less sure about. Cheap forges / smithy's compete with having the wonder bonus and building Guild of Hammers instead - and Engineering is probably a higher tech priority than Smelting? The wonder bonus does help with an early Dereptus, which compensates for the low vaults and grants dwarves XP, and cheaper Epics etc., but after that any value probably needs careful targeting of key wonders (and thus techs). Titan, Bone Palace? But any wonders that are off the path to Construction + Trade for Trebs and Chariots (I note dwarves do get access to chariots - boar riders are therefore almost certainly a waste of time) feel like potential traps. For example, in SP I can afford to grab Drama for the GB, build the Lyre and use it to pop borders in new cities to effectively transfer hammers to them from the developed centre by avoiding building monuments or temples, but I'd want to do some fairly serious calculations before trying that in MP ...

As for ORG, Courthouses are so-so, but getting to CoL, going Aristograrianism and spamming the cheap ones doesn't feel bad. And if the map has coastal space (big if), cheap lighthouses are also nice (and there's some synergy with IND there for a sneaky GLH). And if the difficulty level is highish (Emp? - I normally muck about on Monarch) the lower maintenance should start to count later - if the Dwarves are still alive, of course. Edit: you also get to build Command Posts, of course, which is a bit of an anti-synergy with pushing for Titan with IND, but getting a free promo for Mobility is basically a necessity, and they give some flexibility in civic choices (and more XP is always good). They pay for themselves eventually - a back of the envelope calculation suggests that it takes between 6-10 chariots or 8-12 trebs to be worth it purely for the hammers.

There may be a play around the Worldspell + ING to upgrade a bunch of pre-built warriors to something unexpected and useful.

I haven't had a look at the Elohim yet, but I do like the straightforward nature of the Khazad. I have a feeling that the Elohim may be stronger (and very effective against Sheaim and anyone playing Overlords or relying on skeleton spam), but would not, myself, want the trouble of planning around PHI bulbs ...

[Brian Shanahan]

Last game we fight with mages, dwafen druids, asasins, chariots, priests.game before as well there were tier 4 and  even beastmaster, the game before same so i can say last 3 games n wich i played tier 3-4 were presents.

Interesting; thanks for that. I note that Dwarven Druids are more accessible in EitB than base FFH. They are probably a nice-to-have, however: I suspect that sinking beakers into Smelting / Iron Working / Blasting Powder for as many cannon as you can afford (and iron en-route) is better than Fanaticism / Commune.

I've had a quick run-through with Arturus and looked up some threads where other people have played the Khazad. Auro won with them back in 43, and DaveV had a go more recently. Consensus seems to have been to ignore the vaults mechanic, spend gold as normal and just put up with the happiness malus. However, they both had Kandros Fir, and I have a nasty feeling that AGG/FIN is strictly stronger than ORG/IND.

That said, I do like the IND + dwarven combo for cheap, fast workers. It offers a chance to really snowball, particularly if starting with a few improvement techs already in the bag. My tests suggest that you don't get extra units in Discovery - if you do get a free worker, it would blunt the advantage. The rest I'm less sure about. Cheap forges / smithy's compete with having the wonder bonus and building Guild of Hammers instead - and Engineering is probably a higher tech priority than Smelting? The wonder bonus does help with an early Dereptus, which compensates for the low vaults and grants dwarves XP, and cheaper Epics etc., but after that any value probably needs careful targeting of key wonders (and thus techs). Titan, Bone Palace? But any wonders that are off the path to Construction + Trade for Trebs and Chariots (I note dwarves do get access to chariots - boar riders are therefore almost certainly a waste of time) feel like potential traps. For example, in SP I can afford to grab Drama for the GB, build the Lyre and use it to pop borders in new cities to effectively transfer hammers to them from the developed centre by avoiding building monuments or temples, but I'd want to do some fairly serious calculations before trying that in MP ...

As for ORG, Courthouses are so-so, but getting to CoL, going Aristograrianism and spamming the cheap ones doesn't feel bad. And if the map has coastal space (big if), cheap lighthouses are also nice (and there's some synergy with IND there for a sneaky GLH). And if the difficulty level is highish (Emp? - I normally muck about on Monarch) the lower maintenance should start to count later - if the Dwarves are still alive, of course. Edit: you also get to build Command Posts, of course, which is a bit of an anti-synergy with pushing for Titan with IND, but getting a free promo for Mobility is basically a necessity, and they give some flexibility in civic choices (and more XP is always good). They pay for themselves eventually -  a back of the envelope calculation suggests that  it takes between 6-10 chariots or 8-12 trebs to be worth it purely for the hammers.

There may be a play around the Worldspell + ING to upgrade a bunch of pre-built warriors to something unexpected and useful.

I haven't had a look at the Elohim yet, but I do like the straightforward nature of the Khazad. I have a feeling that the Elohim may be stronger (and very effective against Sheaim and anyone playing Overlords or relying on skeleton spam), but would not, myself, want the trouble of planning around PHI bulbs ...

The problem with the Elohim is that without conquest it is almost a vanilla a civ as the Bannor are. I'll continue to have a think about things, maybe run some Elohim and Doviello starts.

[mackoti]

Well thye have the reliquary thing and march wich is very strong belive me as I played them.

[Brian Shanahan]

Well thye have the reliquary thing and march wich is very strong belive me as I played them.

Yeah, I'm beginning to change my mind here. I'll play a few Elohim games and make my decision.

[shallow_thought]

Well thye have the reliquary thing and march wich is very strong belive me as I played them.

Yeah, I'm beginning to change my mind here.  I'll play a few Elohim games and make my decision.

March is definitely strong; in tests against the AI I don't know if you'll get enough dead units to get a feel for reliquary. I don't know the logic for where the spirit guide goes - can you manipulate it to do something stupid like throw warriors at a fort to get an adept to a mage?

I will say that I missed dwarven workers when trying out the Elohim! But so much will depend on the map.

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok I've changed my mind over the weekend. Played a few starts with Einion over the weekend and he's definitely more flexible than the Dwarfs. So I'll go with him once the game gets going.

Einion of the Elohim is my pick if anybody official is looking.

[shallow_thought]

Bulbs it is. Also cheap levels, healing while attacking, and a good way to hold cities taken by an awesome alpha strike, assuming one can be arranged. Along with hard-countering undead. Should be fun.

[Brian Shanahan]

Bulbs it is. Also cheap levels, healing while attacking, and a good way to hold cities taken by an awesome alpha strike, assuming one can be arranged. Along with hard-countering undead. Should be fun.

Been watching lots of Dwarf Fortress lets plays recently, so hopefully a moderate amount of fun only.

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry I haven't been posting too much, with the map not arriving yet and with me being up the walls at work (police certs are busy, collection permits are busy and training has been very busy after the Covid-19 hiatus), I've just not had the energy to post stuff too much.

But with the map soon coming to us, it's time to get thinking again. One thing I noticed from playing random games under the new mini-patch is that freaks still get the metal bonus. So if the Balseraphs are in the game, they might decide to rush. Other than that, I've just been reinforcing my idea that speed is of paramount importance in war (hence going off the dwarfs) and so will probably emphasise horses more than I do in single-player, augmented with some hasted mobility one casters, and see how that goes. In relation to reliquaries, they're a nice thing to have, too random to be depending on them to give XP to the units you want, but a nice little compensation for losing your level ten knight to a warrior.

In relation to my holidays (which are now set at 4th March to 19th March), I will need a ded-lurker. There was some chance my brother would be able to boot Civ on his work laptop, but no dice (it's just really sensitive to games being installed) and I've no laptop of my own (and before anybody asks, the desktop is waaaay to big to be lugging on a boat to Wales), but I will be fully engaged in the game, through my phone and, if I need bigger pictures, my brother's tablet.