Burn Baby Burn, Kandros Inferno: Team Sheaim Spoiler Thread!

[Bobchillingworth]

I think you've pointed out all of the real flaws and advantages for each religion.


Runes probably makes the most sense for your first faith. The temple gold pays off as quicker warrior upgrades, Arete means faster production of warriors / PZ, and Bambur spares you having to research a couple arcane techs in order to get enchanted PZ weapons. The Mines are obviously great, but awfully hammer intensive, and I wouldn't build them before rushing someone unless you get that free engineer from an event. The second hero is okay if you give him lots of first strike and defensive strike promotions and your enemy doesn't drown him in strike-immune units. Also prevents your opponents from building one of the best anti-zombie heroes.


The main issue with the Runes, as you point out, is that it's likely to be fairly popular (I imagine that the Grigori may make a play for it as well, for the enchantment and Iron boosts for their heroes). Hopefully you will have met your likely competitors before you have to decide which religion you're going for (advanced era was rejected, right?), and you can pretend to be nice to them in order to "coordinate" religions. Otherwise, one of the other two faiths is probably a safer bet.


I think the Empyrean works best in the long run, blinding stacks of units on flatland and then tramping them with PZ is just cruel. Also everyone is well aware of how much Chalid rocks. I agree that it's too much of a tech diversion at the start before fanaticism- one of the other players may have their eye on Basium as well, after all. I'd wait for this one until you can get the Rev in the game, that also gives you an excuse to get Valin or Bambur killed off in a spectacular fashion so that whoever is playing the Mercurians gets a free Super Angel.


Out of the three, the best early one then seems to be the Order, assuming you can't diplomatically ensure or ascertain that you're free to grab the Runes. Blessed PZ (you can Bless them, right?) will be just as good as ones with Bambur's enchanted blades, and Valin gives you some badly needed mobility. Crusaders are usually a blah unit, but they could provide you with some extra punch and make for instant garrisons if you have priests found temples in every captured city. Good alignment isn't necessarily a bad thing; it'll block Hell terrain for if/when you do decide to raise the Armageddon counter (and surely someone will summon Hyborem), and it makes you eligible for the prophet and other good-exclusive events. Being neutral sucks, trust me :P

[Selrahc]

I think I'm convinced on going for Order, unless we can make sure somehow that we'll land Runes.

I'm less convinced that being Good is useful. Maybe I'm just not remembering a lot of events, but mechanically Neutral seems to be the best alignment. It's really hard to get the AC high enough to spread hell into neutral land. You're able to run slavery if you want to. And you get awesome druids rather than blah paladins or eidolons.

(I imagine that the Grigori may make a play for it as well, for the enchantment and Iron boosts for their heroes)

They're still unable to. Agnosticism is a civ trait for the Grigori. No religions for them, even under big daddy Dain.

(advanced era was rejected, right?)

Yep.

[Bobchillingworth]

I think there are a couple events where being Good can help calm screaming spirits or some nonsense, and prevent you from getting a permanent unhappiness in a city. I guess the big one is the prophet... I've gotten that event at least once in PBEM 1 and cursed the game mechanics for never giving me the alignment change option.


Missing slavery is a shame, but isn't the whip nerfed in FFH anyway? I guess you'll miss out on some hammers from rushing stuff with barb slaves. Drafting is probably more useful if you're worried about being able to construct emergency troops.


Would you ever really use druids in this game? They require like three expensive recon / nature techs that provide hardly any benefit for you. Plus 200-hammer groves (or perhaps that's just beastmasters?). At least Righteousness allows Sphener, who is pretty great. Entangle is a neat ability, but I think Sun II should work about as well, plus I really doubt the game will get to the point where having Druids will matter much. Hell, if it does, you could always swap to Esus or some nonsense :P


Honestly, I don't think that alignment will matter much in this game at all.

[Selrahc]

Would you ever really use druids in this game?

With our current tech plan? Doubtful. But they are really really good units if you ever do get the chance to use them. Entangle is Sun 2, which isn't too shabby. But on top of that they have the ability to cast nature spells and nature affinity. Lastly, they've got the fact that if upgraded from a priest they can cast spells like a high priest. Getting access to Crown of Fire or Unyielding Order or Earthquake or Summon Balor or even a combination of them without having to be in the religion is great. Druids are just so much better than Paladins and Eidolons.

Dwarven druids are even better than that.

I think there are a couple events where being Good can help calm screaming spirits or some nonsense, and prevent you from getting a permanent unhappiness in a city

Sounds more like one of the spirit mana events.

Really I doubt that alignment will matter much in this game at all.

Yeah.

Missing slavery is a shame, but isn't the whip nerfed in FFH anyway?

Sadly for my Illians, it is. Still has some use though. Mainly in getting new cities set up with Marketplace/Elder Council/Monument quickly(Although we shouldn't need monuments in this game).

[Bobchillingworth]

Something that occurs to me is that given all of our combined experience, and your awesome civ / leader combo, it's quite likely that you are going to be "that guy" who everyone ranks at the start as most likely to win. Thankfully a large map with no settlers will make it difficult for anyone to get dogpilled, at least early on.

[Bobchillingworth]

I bet this is going to be one heck of a map... there's more posts in the planning thread alone than every other thread combined :P

[Selrahc]

Well.. we wanted something interesting, and we gave them a free hand, so hopefully it'll be good. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[Bobchillingworth]

I can just imagine





Caaarefully examining each tile, sweating over every barb city and lair placement, while large & small gears grind in the background.

[Mist]

Caaarefully examining each tile, sweating over every barb city and lair placement, while large & small gears grind in the background.

You're not that far off

Your starting position. Stacks with settlers circled.

[Bobchillingworth]

Assuming super settlers are on...


Perhaps the warrior 1W of the corn moves 1NW, southern settler moves 1SE for visibility purposes, northern settlers goes 1NW for the same reason, the warrior near the hut moves to pop it, but only after you've already settled a city, and the settler warriors do idk what.


If you don't have the starting settler bonus, I guess move the settler warriors to where I recommended the settlers themselves go.



No idea where you're going to want to actually settle just from the screencap, but in place for both cities seems like a really bad idea since two tiles will be wasted from overlap, and at least one more to a mountain. Might make sense to keep one settler in reserve for a long time in case you see some really nice land later that isn't claimed. Just having one city might slow you down to start, but you should be able to capture those two barb towns very soon after getting BW. OTOH, if you want to pull off a successful rush, the extra beakers from two cities at the start is worth a lot more than a nice city much later down the line. Plus who knows, you could always get that "free settler" event.


Edit: Upon looking at the screenshot again, for the northern settler / warrior pair it might make the post sense to move the warrior 1NW, and if he doesn't reveal anything spectacular send the settler 1S and settle. The extra vision you start with implies that there may be islands out there, and so you'll want a port down, and settling 1S of that settler's present location avoids the mountain and gets fewer worthless coast / ocean tiles.