TBS: The Long Erebus

[GermanJoey]

Since you put down a Spi leader for 4 (!) for your picks, could you post a little about why you want that trait?

[The Black Sword]

Spi is a pretty cool trait in FFH. It's economic aspect is arguably more powerful than in base BTS, as there are more and earlier civics to switch into, as well as religions which offer some distinct and powerful bonuses. Then in addition it also has a military aspect too, making your disciple units a lot more effective(extra xp gain and mobility promo). I'd possibly rank it after expansive as the second best trait and I wasn't really feeling like playing Expansive this time. Spi is just more interesting with Civic swaps as opposed to pumping hammers through settlers. I was also leaning away from the Arcane trait, which is both weak and feels like it restricts you into going down the arcane line.

So for the elves I had Thessa(Exp/Arc) vs Arendel(Spi/Cre), they're probably about the same power level but Arendel's traits seem less restricting. You also have Amelanchier(Phi/Raiders) which is a bit of a strange choice. Phi is good but it's hard to see how the elves take advantage of Raiders, especially as the scenario moves away from a duel. I actually might have tried him out instead of Thessa to see what he could do but Arendel just felt so flexible.

Os-Gabella was a similar dilemna, with Tebryn(Arcane) and Averax(melee) both feeling a lot more 1-dimensional. I'm really interested in trying out the new Planar Gates btw, would not mind this second pick at all.

Hopefully we don't get down to picks 5 and 6, Varn is the obvious choice for the Malakim, Capria was a closer call but I do think she has the best traits out of the Bannor leaders.

[GermanJoey]

Right on man, I'd always thought it seemed pretty good myself, just from the possibility to abuse +wealth% civics when saving money and then switching into +science% civics when researching, on top of the usual 5-turns-of-slavery then 5-turns-of-something-else flip-flop.

Now, I abused my authority as mapmaker to delete the Ljos off everyone else's list, so you gotta tell us why you want them elves so bad.

[The Black Sword]

on top of the usual 5-turns-of-slavery then 5-turns-of-something-else flip-flop.

Unfortunately a stealth nerf to Spiritual in FFH is that there's a 10t delay between revolt times. I guess it would be too awesome otherwise.

I intend to do some posts about the strengths(yes, we have some!) of the Ljosalfar and my opponents choices, but I'm still reminding myself how to play FFH right now. In short, some of them took the pick phase a lot more seriously than me though.




I like the starting area GJ, multiple good options for different civs. I'm sure Auro settled for the flood plains and judging my the land area in the demos Dave settled by the fish in the north east. I went back and forth between my current location and the plains hill 3S. The southern spot has a better start and is probably the best location for a vanilla civ. My location works better with a God King capital though and I hope that will be worth the delay. My first city will go directly to that southern spot and hopefully there won't be much of a delay in hooking the resources(the incense is the big one).

Current plan is to go for Agriculture -> Calendar. That seems pretty likely, but I'm still considering after that. I'm been messing around with a run at The Great Lighthouse. But it's pretty expensive and I don't really want to chop my forests into it as elves either. It looks like every city on the map will get the bonus though ...




My scouts are making a doomed attempt at circumnavigation. I don't know why, they always get picked off by the FHH wildlife but we'll see how far they get. Circumnav also looks important here.

[The Black Sword]

Had to mothball the circumnav idea. I ran into Auro's scout in the east and had to bring the western one back home to cover the capital. Auro's Lightbringer could have made it to me before the first warrior, but he seems to have lost his way somewhere. I'm searching for Auro's homeland with my other scout.

Plan is to build another worker at size 3, followed by a settler at size 5. We'll start off with a generic non-elvish opening with Agri-farms.

[The Black Sword]

Plan is to build another worker at size 3, followed by a settler at size 5.

Pretty much been following this, the micro seemed pretty neat, a lot of numbers exactly hitting their thresholds.




The settler is going 3S for corn/rice/incense/silk. After completing Calendar I saved gold for a turn then decided to go for Mysticism since nothing else looks immediately useful. This will unlock God-King(+50% hammers and gold in the cap) and pagan temples. Temples are half priced for me, so 33h for a happy point while I stay in the religion civic. It also allows me to run a priest specialist and that looks pretty handy too. I definitely want to bulb Priesthood with a Prophet at some stage here and unlock Priest of the Leaves. A minor negative is that it will be tough to run Pacifism since I'd have to give up the happy from the competing Religion civic. Temples also give +1happy with incense but that isn't unlocked until Philosophy, still some time away.

I'm not sure what will come after Mysticism yet; Education, Hunting, Mining and Animal Handling all look interesting. Here's a potential dotmap:




The original 4 cities in the starting area can work well with just Agri-farms but that there are a lot more animal resources.

Of my rivals I met Auro to the East:



I ran into his lightbringer around the sheep and I suspect he's actually east of that rather than south. The scout here got ambushed by a Griffon from the fog.

Auro is Varn(Spi/Cre/Ada) of the Malakim
Auro is a very good player. I've played one grueling duel against him which ended in a draw and he's won a couple of FFH games already. His micro seems very good and he's pretty aggressive when he gets a military advantage. He also has a surprisingly common trait for FFH players - the ability to organise dogpiles on themselves. Still he's probably the scariest of my opponents.

The Malakim are a pretty good civ. I'd say their biggest advantage is their leader Varn. Spiritual is one of the best traits as I've already mentioned in this thread. For his other trait he has Creative for the first 75t of the game ie. the turns where it is useful. After that he's adapative - he can choose his second trait every 75t. He could pick something like Org or Arc which have very little power in those first 75t. So essentially he is a leader with 3 traits instead of 2.

They do have a couple of other advantages. They are a desert civilisation and have some bonuses there - double move on desert and +1c. This usually doesn't have much effect on our balanced MP maps but there are some flood plain locations where they can take advantage. From the graphs it seems he settled his capital for the flood plains here. IIRC there's also a lvl 1 sun spell that can scorch land down to bare desert, that might have some useful military applications.

Their world spell is unlocked at Priesthood and gives them a free priest in each city, of whatever religion they are in at the time. I should be aware of this potential military burst. He might also be thinking of bulbing Priesthood like I am.

They also have some other bonuses for building disciple units. Their Desert Shrine(replacement for the Pagan Temple) gives +2xp and they can upgrade Lightbringers to get a free Sentry promotion, and another way to get a quick army immediately after teching Priesthood.

Overall the Malakim are a very powerful civ but probably slightly below top tier.

In the west my neighbour is Ellimist.



Here my scout also got ambushed by a gryphon. However this guy won! I suspect Ellimist's starting area is west of that mana node. With the mana restrictions we asked for in the game setup we can sort of use the mana nodes to guess at cvis locations. Overview of the Balseraphs to come.

[The Black Sword]

Some thoughts on the first-to boni in FFH, which ones would be good for us and which ones we might be able to get.

Drama - Generally you see people generate a Great Bard and and use it to bulb Drama for another free one. However the only benefit of Drama itself is the ability to easily pop borders with build culture. This is a very strong ability but not one we value being Creative, so we can ignore this. I guess I'd expect Q, Dave or Dreylin to win this.

The Great Lighthouse - This looks pretty powerful given the map layout. It is expensive though(335h) and Sailing(345b) isn't good for much else besides galleys to settle island cities. I'd love to win it but I have a number of disadvantages; capital is off the coast, don't want to chop forests, slow elvish start, off the optimal tech path. It seems likely to me that the Lanun will pick up an early Fishing, and their tech is great with pirate coves, so they're probably the favourites. Q and jalepeno are also competitors, Q being Ind while jalepeno's Luichurp are the only civ that can generate early Engineers. Actually, if I was jalepeno I'm pretty sure I'd target this with my first engineer. Let's write off TGL until given reason to think otherwise.

The Great Library - This costs 234h with a marble doubler and comes at the Writing tech(409b). It also requires 3 80h libraries to be built. It is more an enabler for a specialist economy in FFH, than a GP generator in BTS. It gives one free scientist and +1b to every scientist specialist. It is really expensive however and surprisingly enough, nobody has the Phi trait for half priced libraries. I don't think this is something powerful enough to target early on and we can perhaps come back and re-evaluate after we've hit our early goals. Who will build it? Perhaps Auro if he picks Philo with adaptive, it's also suited more to an Arcane gameplan, since mage guilds open sage slots and GS bulb down the Arcane line, so perhaps jalepeno again?

The Form of the Titan - Now this, I think we can win. Gives +2xp in all cities and requires costs 335h with a copper doubler. Comes at Warfare(345b), which also has the national epic and the useful warfare civic. The main requirement though is you a need a lvl6 unit, that's 26xp, to build it. We're the only civ with an early hero in Gilden Silveric to unlock it. Well, the Luichurp have Barnaxus but he doesn't have the Hero promotion for extra xp.

Military Strategy - This comes with a free Great Commander. It's a decent tech on it's own with the heroic epic and the military state civic. That's not amazing but a Spi civ can switch in and out of it to draft. It is directly after Warfare, so it's likely we'll go for FotT and then evaluate this. It also requires Philosophy, which is fine, we need that to bulb Priesthood. This is a primarily tech constrained bonus though, so I doubt we're the favourites. Should be careful of Dave and Auro, and Ellimist too if he throws an early Revelry.

The Bone Palace - a whopping 469h at Philosophy, and a marble doubler. This gives the winner a free golden age. I expect Jalepeno to take this with an engineer before anyone else can consider that much hammers. I'd probably go TGL first GE, BP second. Q might try to compete, being Ind and having reasons to go up the religious line. We'll have a better hammer capital than most, thanks to elvish forests, but our early science is weaker, and I don't want Philo until either Mil Strat or a Priesthood bulb. So we probably ignore this, but pay attention to jale's engineers and maybe we can steal it.

Religion - There's not really much bonus for being first to the religion in FFH. People do compete for heroes and the Mines of Gal-Dur but these are all far enough down the tech tree that I wouldn't consider them early bonuses. The advantages of the various religions requires a post of itself.

[The Black Sword]

Been a bit busy recently, but the demos look pretty nice this turn, so you can have a report.

I'm at 3 cities with a settler just coming out:


I had a rather large barb invasion since my last report. I managed to deal with it well enough, only got a single road pillaged, but I had to mess around with my city builds and they spent some time unhappy to get some extra warriors out. Dyes were just connected this turn to fix that. 

I hoped to settle here, for the cotton happiness:


But we'll see if the barbs interfere. Otherwise I can fall back to the flood plains spot while I get some proper military units.



Those military units will be Hunters built from my capital btw. After the settler I'll probably build the pagan temple while waiting for hunting to come in for Hunting Lodge -> Hunters. Temple +hook Furs + lodge is 3 more happy cap getting me to size 10.



The second city is getting me a prophet, probably to bulb Way of the Forests. Meanwhile the third city is starting a temple of it's own, it will go for another prophet to bulb Priesthood afterwards.


This is the extent of my tech tree besides Mysticism for GK. AH was a cheap tech to reveal horses and unlock pastures(+ animal capture for later). It wasn't really necessary right away, but I didn't think anything was so I went for the horses. Now my plan is Hunting (Hunters, Deer Fur) followed by Education (cottages + apprenticeship) into Mining. Mining is pretty good for the elves, if I mine over the forested hills at my capital I get 1/4 tiles or 1/6 with God King. That's pretty nuts. But if I pick up Mining immediately then the prophet bulb path targets Way of the Earthmother instead of the Forests. I think this way the timing should work that I land the prophet just before I finish Mining. The bulb isn't super-valuable in terms of pure beakers(~430 IIRC) but there's a lot of good techs to get so I think the timing is worth it. My forests can start upgrading to ancient forests, and being spiritual the religion and temples are pretty nice for the happy cap. The other point is that if I went for Mining I'd be stuck using warriors to deal with the barbs for a while. What are these other valuable techs that I want? Cartography for City States at some stage, Archery for Gilden, Philosophy unlocks Incense which is +2happy with my temples(honestly I wonder whether I should have teched this before everything else), Warfare for the Form of the Titan. Btw, I have known tech bonus on Festivals and Fishing, so I theorise one of Auro or Ellimist are going for a Drama bulb or the GLH. Someone(probably Dave) just founded OO.



As I said, the demos look good this turn. In general my food has been close to top but I've trailed a bit in GNP and production. Particularly in GNP, I expect I'm probably a tech behind other people, that was the trade off I noticed by picking my capital location vs the others. You can also see everyone else is taking more precautions with their soldier count. 



Ellimist and Auro are both doing well, though I beat them by a couple of turns to the third city. Ellimist's been 1-2 happy points ahead of where I put him for almost the whole game and I'm curious for afterwards how he got them. Maybe he just grew into unhappiness too?

Btw, what has my elvish civilisation done for me at this stage? Nothing but lazy workers, just like I predicted.   Hopefully once I get education I can start making the elvish cottages work for me.

[GermanJoey]

So are elvish cottages where the Elves are really gonna start doing a lot? What else do they have goin' on?

[GermanJoey]

Will you have workshops in time to help Santa make the presents ?!??