It's a Barb World Outside, Let's Keep It That Way: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers

[Amelia]

You're perfectly right about all of us playing stupidly at the start of course, but then again, we do have the knowledge that there's no CoE who can thrash us immediately =)

Nice analysis, actually. There's nothing much i can add here.

[Ichabod]

Stupid is a harsh word... but I've seen some very risky play from time to time.

Maybe I'm overreacting about the bad lair results chances, but i'd never be brave enough to explore a dungeon in my civilization's border.

And while we saw no early elimination up to now, we saw a lot of GPs, Adventurers, techs...

But keeping an undefended capital in the start of the game is too crazy!

Ah, and thanks for the comment!

[Ichabod]

Leader Analysis:


Our brave leader, Jonas Endain:




Jonas Endain has the Spiritual, Expansive and Barbarian traits.

You can see what the traits do in this screenshot (sorry, but I don't know how to edit even this simple things, so you get a big picture):




So, let's talk about each of the traits a bit:

Barbarian:

• -10% Science
  
• Starts at peace with the Barbarians
  
• Unable to explore dungeons and lairs
  

For starters, we have worst than normal research capabilities. It gets even worst if we add the fact that the Clan of Embers doesn't have a starting technology.

Early research has to be very well thought through. We can't waste beakers with the wrong technologies.

So, we have bad early research. Well, we have bad late game research too, since we can't build libraries. But, who needs science anyways?

The good thing about this trait is that we start at peace with the barbarians. That means they won't attack us and that we can walk safely even inside their cities.

There's 2 ways to end the peace with the barbarians. One way is to have a ingame score of 50% more points than the guy in the second place. This way the barbs will declare war at us by themselves. But this is not likely to happen. The other way is if we declare war on them. Sometimes when moving a unit on the same tile as a barb one, the game will prompt a window asking if we want to declare war on the barbs. I'll probably do this sometime in the game (specially if I lose Rantine).

The problem is that there's something strange about this prompt, sometimes it doesn't happen. If anyone knows a more reliable way to declare on the barbs, please, tell me.

Another feat of the barbarian trait is that it makes me unable to explore dungeons and lairs, since it'd be imbalanced, since I'd only get good results. Robbing graveyards is a different thing, for some reason, so I can do it. If I declare war on the barbs, I regain the ability to explore the lairs, so it's not completely useless for me to keep them on my territory.

And another minor (but with some possible uses) feat of the trait is that I can recruit strenght 3 goblins if I stand in a tile that has a goblin fort. It costs 30 gold. I don't think I'll use it this game, but let's wait and see.



Expansive:

Under normal conditions, expansive is a very, very nice trait in FfH. You get +3 health (always helps in a game where the health bonus multiplying buildings are much more exapnsive and way worst than in BTS civ), double production of granary and harbors (granaries in FfH are not as good as in BTS Civ and so aren't a must build building - they only stock 20% of the overflow while needing more hammers to build - harbors are useful, but not that big of a deal too) and +100% settler production. Yeah, now we're talking.

+100% is crazy good. Combine this with warrens and you got yourself a civ that expands rabbit-like.

Unfortunately, no settlers option kind of takes this advantage away (by kind of, read completely and utterly destroys).

But, I didn't pick Jonas for the Expansive trait. So, let's take a look at:


Spiritual:

I'm a big fan of spiritual in BTS Civ. Being able to switch traits whenever you need too is crazy good (slavery + OR to build infrastructure, switch to caste + pacifism to pop a GSci, you get the drill).

In FfH, spiritual not only gives the anarchy free civic switches (and a lot of crazy good civics, albeit I'll not be able to unlock a lot of them) but it also gives free promotions to divine units (mobility - +1 movement - and potency - gains passive xp faster) and better production of temples (from all religions, including pagan temples).

So, in my opinion, this trait rocks. Expect me to change civics a lot based on the circumstances of the game. Even if I can't make the consumption + scholarship binary research extraordinaire combo, I'll be able to pull something of.

[Amelia]

If i remember correctly, right click on the barb unit and you should be able to declare war.

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry for no contact the last few days, but I was out of internet (as you already know from CFC Ichabod). Reading with interest.

Edit: as regards cropping your screenshots, open them in paint and cut out the bits you want and save them as a seperate .jpg.

[Ichabod]

Well, we'll be starting the game soon.

I can't wait to see my starting position. I'm hoping for at least wine or some kind of calendar resource (not forested, please). Anything other than that will make for a tough start, since I'll have very bad early research.

If i get a heavily forested start, might as well say bye, bye to your friendly barb friends... I'll be fielding warriors against archmages...

[Mist]

Your starting position. Stacks with settlers circled.

[Irgy]

Great thread so far Ichabod. I saw no-settlers-expansive and thought "this guy surely doesn't know what he's doing". But then I read the thread and thought "this guy definately knows what he's doing". I still would have picked Sheelba, but at least it's clear you had your reasons and knew what you were getting into. Good to know. I'm lurking globally so I won't say much, but I said Clan would be OP in the planning thread so I'm kind of rooting for you to win still anyway Best of luck.

[Ichabod]

Nice! The game is about to start!

I can't play my turns right now, but I'll put some thought based on the screenshot.

We can place two cities. Here's what I'll probably do:

Capital: Settle it 1N, 1NW of the rice. It's a very nice commerce city, with three easily improved calendar resorces. Problem is that the city won't have any hill, not one. Settling the city 1N of the rice would give us 2 hills + a floodplain.

But, it's very important for me to compensate the Clan slow start. We don't get a starting tech and we have -10% science. The second dye we get settling 1N, 1NW of the rice will help.

And there's another thing: settling 1N, 1NW I'll convert the barb city when the city (which will be the capital) pop its borders from the second time. It'll be way earlier than the time I need to get BW + build Rantine. I'm not certain about it, but almost...

So, I'll have a third city way earlier than expected, which will have gems in the fat cross. And i'll be able to get by the production problem using the spiritual trait (slavery, conquest) and warrens + SoKs. Not that the Clan has much buildings to build...

2nd city: Probably 1W to get extra protection on the hill. It'll be my main production city for now.

[Ichabod]

Thanks Irgy!

I noticed something that will probably lower my chances in this game a bit, though. The placed barb cities have warriors for defense. The normal barbarian world cities have archers with the weak promotion (strenght 2/4 with city defense bonus).

So, my opponents can probably conquer some cities with just warriors without taking much losses... Specially if they have agressive warriors...

Well, not to worry. Everything comes at a price. At least my world spell will be buffed -> If the Illians use their world spell at turn 1, I have a good chance on defeating an opponent right at the start. I think I need 5-6 warriors to conquer a city that isn't on a hill defended by 2 warriors.