[Eitb spoilers] Miguelito's fortune hangs on a thread

[Miguelito]

I downloaded the XML, and can start Civ without errors; the error occurs when I try to load your save file. I am able to work with the worldbuilder file.

1) You made a reference to huts. If they're on, maybe it's worth churning out a bunch of scouts? Taking more spins of the hut roulette wheel seems like potentially the fastest way to advance in tech.

2) I agree that early commerce is the biggest priority.

3) Are the map dimensions in your worldbuilder file correct? That's a very large map for five players, and I'd expect a lot of barbs at Immortal difficulty.

4) Starting early with sage GPP seems like a great plan; building a mage guild allows a second sage specialist. And cranking out an adept or two will allow floating eyes to scout out a good chunk of the map. Going either alteration or necromancy after KotE will give a military boost against the barbs or potential neighbors (although the map looks big enough that neighbors may not be much of a worry in the early game). Two great sages can bulb Sorcery very efficiently, and once you have fireballs and regeneration you should be in very good shape for military. For reference: level 2 summoning spheres are death, entropy, ice, law.

1) I'm not sure actually? Ref, do we have huts in the end?

2) Would you then agree with Mining before AH, in order to get the gold online quickly? It feels weird, however with God King mine hammers are quite good

3) Sadly, not at all, I just started a random map. I'm forgetting how to do these things properly. Do we know the map dimensions Ref?

4a) Yes the early sage feels quite nice, also because the beakers definitely help in the opening turns aswell. He can be dismissed from time to time in order to speed up expansion. What do you think of Pacifism? Of course it's notable when building the warriors, also because you easily lose rounding hammers. With the early mage guild it should be even nicer though (ebcause you don't lose half a GPP to round off), and get the 167 GPP for the second GS in a reasonable 19 turns, while without the civic it's 28.

4b) I was thinking necromancy because the skeletons make adepts a good choice for defense (like on par with other tier 2 units I guess?) even before Sorcery. And it neatly carries over to spectres, which I understand are considered the strongest summons? Somehow in my SP games I never really did necromancy (because I can't be a bad guy?), nut here it feels quite right, with fire mana from the palace providing the artillery already, and body the essential support skill. What does alteration do for us early? That one spell that enchants weapons? And yes the metamagic mana from the palace is awesome. Palace mana was one significant factor for the pick.

[RefSteel]

I downloaded the XML, and can start Civ without errors; the error occurs when I try to load your save file. I am able to work with the worldbuilder file.

What's the mod/folder you're using called? I think last game might have used 12.1 and for this one the instructions Q posted seemed to be modifying "Erebus in the Balance v12" - is it possible there's a discrepency there somewhere?

I'll post the answers to the map questions in the tech thread.

[DaveV]

2) Would you then agree with Mining before AH, in order to get the gold online quickly? It feels weird, however with God King mine hammers are quite good


4a) Yes the early sage feels quite nice, also because the beakers definitely help in the opening turns aswell. He can be dismissed from time to time in order to speed up expansion. What do you think of Pacifism? Of course it's notable when building the warriors, also because you easily lose rounding hammers. With the early mage guild it should be even nicer though (ebcause you don't lose half a GPP to round off), and get the 167 GPP for the second GS in a reasonable 19 turns, while without the civic it's 28.

4b) I was thinking necromancy because the skeletons make adepts a good choice for defense (like on par with other tier 2 units I guess?) even before Sorcery. And it neatly carries over to spectres, which I understand are considered the strongest summons? Somehow in my SP games I never really did necromancy (because I can't be a bad guy?), nut here it feels quite right, with fire mana from the palace providing the artillery already, and body the essential support skill. What does alteration do for us early? That one spell that enchants weapons? And yes the metamagic mana from the palace is awesome. Palace mana was one significant factor for the pick.

2) Yes, definitely. Especially with god king, and without agrarianism, the mines are strong tiles. And, as you implied, the surfeit of hammers makes it easy to crank out some units in an emergency.

4a) Yes, I'd agree that pacifism is worth it for the accelerated great person. The military unit penalty is pretty mild, and should actually result in a bonus to overflow (not that +10% is likely to matter until much later in the game).

4b) You could make a good argument for any of the four schools:
Necromancy - four very useful tier 1 spells: Dance of Blades for +1 first strike on all units, skeletons, rust (-10% strength, loss of bronze/iron weapons), blur (immune to first strikes). Spectres are the only tier 2 summon with affinity, so piling up death mana can make them very effective against units that aren't resistant or immune to death damage. This requires stacking up a bunch of death nodes, though, and Cave of Ancestors incentivizes you to go wide on mana rather than deep.
Elementalism - spring (water 1) can be very helpful if there are big stretches of desert, also for putting out fires. Fair winds (Air 1) is very useful if ships come into play, and Maelstrom (Air 2) is one of the best AoE damage spells. Wall of Stone (Earth 1) can give you instant city walls; of course, if your cities are being attacked, you're probably losing the game. You already have fire from the palace, which makes this school less useful.
Divination - lots of support spells. Inspiration (Mind 1) gives +2 beakers and +1 sage GPP. Hosts of the Einherjar (Law 2) are strong against skeletons, spectres, and pit beasts. Courage (Spirit 1) gives +10% stack healing and immunity to fear; Hope (Spirit 2) gives +4 culture and +1 happy in a city, great for popping borders. Scorch (Sun 1) is useful for slowing down attackers or messing up opponents' land; Blinding Light (Sun 2) can freeze units in place for two turns, which can force your opponent to split his stack or remain in place as a sitting duck.
Alteration - Enchanted Blade (Enchantment 1) gives +20% to melee units only, effectively an extra level of Combat promotion or free Aggressive. Enchantment mana also gives +1 happy, which can be a big deal in the early or mid game. Destroy Undead (Life 2) is the ultimate answer to skeleton/spectre spam. Nature is meh. You already have Body, maybe the strongest in this school, so that lessens the value of this branch.

I downloaded the XML, and can start Civ without errors; the error occurs when I try to load your save file. I am able to work with the worldbuilder file.

What's the mod/folder you're using called? I think last game might have used 12.1 and for this one the instructions Q posted seemed to be modifying "Erebus in the Balance v12" - is it possible there's a discrepency there somewhere?

I'll post the answers to the map questions in the tech thread.

I called it 12.1. Miguelito's save forced me to load the "Erebus in the Balance v12.1" mod folder.

[Miguelito]

looking good. I want to move the scout to the reagents, then turn back towards the gems, which I see as the most plausible second city. The warrior should just have a look from the mana hill and maybe that peninsula if it is one, then go back. When do barbs start to come knocking? I just know that they're nasty in FFH, and promise I'll be cautious.

Will probably do some spreadsheeting tonight to figure out the details of the start. For now we were still revolting, thankfully.

coldrain, playing Thessa of the Ljosalfar
Miguelito, playing Valledia the Even of the Amurites
BING_XI_LAO, playing Sandalphon of the Sidar
Qgqqqqq, playing Rhoanna of the Hippus
Aurorarcher, playing Garrim Gyr of the Luchuirp

Hippus is the one we should be the most scared of, so first order is to start somewhere far from Q.
mackoti demonstrated in my first EitB game how to win with Luchuirp - by never building a single combat golem, and leverage the world spell into  a magic army. I know you stood valiantly against, but couldn't save us and the game. If it comes to it, it will be interesting to see if our edge with magic can compete with his Great Engineer army.
Q's Ljosalfar were my nemesis last game, but that was because we started like 10 tiles from each other and he had to research just one tech to enable the worldspell. Let's hope this time's different.
With incomplete information, Bing seems to be doing pretty well in PB74, compared to  previous games?

Do you also want to get the saves? I can write coldrain to include you.

[Tarkeel]

I will (as usual) try to follow to see if this is the time I manage to learn this mod.

[DaveV]

When do barbs start to come knocking?

Animals appear in the interturn between turn 7 and 8 (6 and 7 by the left-hand number). Warrior barbs appear after there are 1.5*(number of players) total cities, so 7 or 8 with five players.

Did you check number of land tiles on the score mouseover?

Remember that clearing the jungle on the gems and improving them requires bronze working or a Blaze adept and a lot of patience.

I'd rate Aurorarcher as the most dangerous player, and I'm sure he'll do well with the Luchuirp. Rhoanna is the builder leader for the Hippus, so Q may concentrate on building settlers instead of horsemen. Bing is hard to judge for me because his reporting is so skimpy; Sidar can do some nasty stuff with their world spell, but can be another builder trap. Coldrain is an unknown quantity, but the Ljosalfar are another slow-building late game civ in my book.

[Miguelito]

4b) You could make a good argument for any of the four schools:
Necromancy - four very useful tier 1 spells: Dance of Blades for +1 first strike on all units, skeletons, rust (-10% strength, loss of bronze/iron weapons), blur (immune to first strikes). Spectres are the only tier 2 summon with affinity, so piling up death mana can make them very effective against units that aren't resistant or immune to death damage. This requires stacking up a bunch of death nodes, though, and Cave of Ancestors incentivizes you to go wide on mana rather than deep.
Elementalism - spring (water 1) can be very helpful if there are big stretches of desert, also for putting out fires. Fair winds (Air 1) is very useful if ships come into play, and Maelstrom (Air 2) is one of the best AoE damage spells. Wall of Stone (Earth 1) can give you instant city walls; of course, if your cities are being attacked, you're probably losing the game. You already have fire from the palace, which makes this school less useful.
Divination - lots of support spells. Inspiration (Mind 1) gives +2 beakers and +1 sage GPP. Hosts of the Einherjar (Law 2) are strong against skeletons, spectres, and pit beasts. Courage (Spirit 1)  gives +10% stack healing and immunity to fear; Hope (Spirit 2) gives +4 culture and +1 happy in a city, great for popping borders. Scorch (Sun 1) is useful for slowing down attackers or messing up opponents' land; Blinding Light (Sun 2) can freeze units in place for two turns, which can force your opponent to split his stack or remain in place as a sitting duck.
Alteration - Enchanted Blade (Enchantment 1) gives +20% to melee units only, effectively an extra level of Combat promotion or free Aggressive. Enchantment mana also gives +1 happy, which can be a big deal in the early or mid game. Destroy Undead (Life 2) is the ultimate answer to skeleton/spectre spam. Nature is meh. You already have Body, maybe the strongest in this school, so that lessens the value of this branch.

So far I've been going with the mindset of reaching Sorcery = win (or at least from then on it depends on tactics and stuff outside our control), and everyone will want to prevent us from getting there. Now looking at the picks, at least coldrain and Auror with Arcane traits will probably have similar objectives. In that regard I see Death as the one mana that helps an army of mostly adepts to fight, because that's the one actual damage skill.

I can see Entropy or Enchantment making sense if we decide to go for Bronze and swordsmen first, but the investment into a training yard is considerable... however, swordsmen are just 33h to the adpets' 60. If we get a second mana node in time, Death and Entropy look pretty good right? If we have only one node, with Sorcery we can respec a Death node to Entropy, if we consider Pit Beasts + Rust better than skeletons + spectres. Good point from you that spectre (and skeleton) targets mustn't be immune to death damage, looking at Luchuirp...

Air surely is strong but situational, and probably not that relevant early on? Water or Mind would be possibly quite nice to have, but don't keep us safe, and there isn't much desert. So yes, Elementalism and Divination have some nice things but nothing that seems pressing.

With the gems and gold from Enchantment we may have less need for the happy. Ah yes missed the jungle on the gems, that is a good supporting argument for going Bronze first. Tech wise it's an additional 400 raw beakers, which compares to 1660 for Knowledge of the Ether +Necro/Alteration/Divination/Elementalism + Education + Writing, assuming that 2 sages bulb all of Sorcery (do they?). And we recover some of that working gems.

I also considered teching Carthography and building Pact of the Nilhorn to keep us safe for the early game. That's 200 raw beakers and a bit more than the cost of a settler. We already have God King, so the civic is less alluring, although certainly there will come a time when we want it.

I simmed out the start! And after a good 2-3 hours (previous sessions included) of doing so, I finally noticed the obvious move - farm the ivory! How could I possibly not think of it?


With this and some fine tuning we get the settler eot 21, having employed the sage for 6 turns. Still just one additional warrior. If we trade 4 turns of sage for FPH the settler can come a further turn earlier, not sure if that's worth it, considering the GPP lost.

Dave, what do you make of our Organized trait? It seems like it would really become interesting only after a possible conquest, which might be an about realistic timing for courthouses? I guess the civic upkeep discount will save us some coins especially considering we're running GK from the start.

And can you or somebody explain what Command Posts are about in EitB? They seem like they might be useful for getting instamages. Can I just build them after researtching Military Science, or can they only be built by Great Commanders? I understand that in original FFH building them with hammers was a featore of Org, but that has changed?

When do barbs start to come knocking?

Animals appear in the interturn between turn 7 and 8 (6 and 7 by the left-hand number). Warrior barbs appear after there are 1.5*(number of players) total cities, so 7 or 8 with five players.

Did you check number of land tiles on the score mouseover?

Remember that clearing the jungle on the gems and improving them requires bronze working or a Blaze adept and a lot of patience.

I'd rate Aurorarcher as the most dangerous player, and I'm sure he'll do well with the Luchuirp. Rhoanna is the builder leader for the Hippus, so Q may concentrate on building settlers instead of horsemen. Bing is hard to judge for me because his reporting is so skimpy; Sidar can do some nasty stuff with their world spell, but can be another builder trap. Coldrain is an unknown quantity, but the Ljosalfar are another slow-building late game civ in my book.

btw can you explain to me the left-hand - right-hand number thing? Animals immediately includes dangerous beasts like spiders and bears?
Yes Tasunke would have been much worse than Rhoanna. Two Expansive leaders might become uncomfortable if we start between them. And two more Arcane leaders - my assessment is that we have the better magic and with the Cave of Ancestors a faster path to wizards, but they both have built in economic advantages that we lack. Could blaze some elven forests though ...
Yes, Coldrain is a complete unknown as a player. Bing has been pretty casual in his games and intricate plans would be out of character, however as I said in his recent game he seems to be doing better?

I will (as usual) try to follow to see if this is the time I manage to learn this mod.

welcome!
please tell if something is obscure, and I (or maybe better yet Dave) will try to explain.

[DaveV]

So far I've been going with the mindset of reaching Sorcery = win (or at least from then on it depends on tactics and stuff outside our control), and everyone will want to prevent us from getting there. Now looking at the picks, at least coldrain and Auror with Arcane traits will probably have similar objectives. In that regard I see Death as the one mana that helps an army of mostly adepts to fight, because that's the one actual damage skill.

Yes, there's always a danger of a dogpile when you're perceived as having reached some critical mass.

It's very handy to have disposable summons to throw away on low-odds attacks to soften up the target. Bear in mind that you have to pay unit support for skeletons (unlike spectres, pit beasts, and hosts of einherjar), and they spend a turn standing around drawing wages before you can use them. Also, skeletons count against war weariness, whereas the temporary summons only add WW when they lose on defense.

I can see Entropy or Enchantment making sense if we decide to go for Bronze and swordsmen first, but the investment into a training yard is considerable... however, swordsmen are just 33h to the adpets' 60. If we get a second mana node in time, Death and Entropy look pretty good right? If we have only one node, with Sorcery we can respec a Death node to Entropy, if we consider Pit Beasts + Rust better than skeletons + spectres. Good point from you that spectre (and skeleton) targets mustn't be immune to death damage, looking at Luchuirp...

Always bear in mind that Ingenuity lets you upgrade for half price. You can build warriors and pay the discounted upgrade cost to get swordsmen. Long term, the discount should be very helpful when upgrading adepts to mages.

With the gems and gold from Enchantment we may have less need for the happy. Ah yes missed the jungle on the gems, that is a good supporting argument for going Bronze first. Tech wise it's an additional 400 raw beakers, which compares to 1660 for Knowledge of the Ether +Necro/Alteration/Divination/Elementalism + Education + Writing, assuming that 2 sages bulb all of Sorcery (do they?). And we recover some of that working gems.

Each sage bulbs 1000 beakers + total population, so ~1050 by the time Sorcery is available. Sorcery was showing as just more than 2000 beakers in your sim, which probably doesn't have the correct map size. So, under the giant assumption that tech costs won't change too much, there should be very little wasted production from a pair of great sages.

I also considered teching Carthography and building Pact of the Nilhorn to keep us safe for the early game. That's 200 raw beakers and a bit more than the cost of a settler. We already have God King, so the civic is less alluring, although certainly there will come a time when we want it.

The Pact is a very cost effective way of putting some very strong units on the field; it's harder to use the hidden nationality tricks against humans than against AIs, but it could still come in handy. City costs scale pretty quickly with number of cities, and I'd expect to have to change to City States at about 7 cities.

Dave, what do you make of our Organized trait? It seems like it would really become interesting only after a possible conquest, which might be an about realistic timing for courthouses? I guess the civic upkeep discount will save us some coins especially considering we're running GK from the start.

Again, civic costs scale with size of civilization, so on a large map ORG might produce some significant savings.

And can you or somebody explain what Command Posts are about in EitB? They seem like they might be useful for getting instamages. Can I just build them after researtching Military Science, or can they only be built by Great Commanders? I understand that in original FFH building them with hammers was a featore of Org, but that has changed?

Yes, command posts used to be buildable for 80 hammers for an ORG civ, and required a Great Commander for everyone else; a quick glance at the XML indicates that should still be the case. Testing in-game would still be a good idea before building a strategy around them.

btw can you explain to me the left-hand - right-hand number thing? Animals immediately includes dangerous beasts like spiders and bears?

The first two saves had identical names in the past, so you had to remember to delete the first turn save before playing the second turn. Q made a change so the first year would be 1 instead of 0, which fixed the duplicate name problem. There's now a display problem, though, where it shows the old year number and the new (+1) one.

[Miguelito]

It's very handy to have disposable summons to throw away on low-odds attacks to soften up the target. Bear in mind that you have to pay unit support for skeletons (unlike spectres, pit beasts, and hosts of einherjar), and they spend a turn standing around drawing wages before you can use them. Also, skeletons count against war weariness, whereas the temporary summons only add WW when they lose on defense.

Good to know, yes. You might convince me of Enchantment yet. However, we'd end up without a tier 2 summon... on Divination I could see us going with Law II, but I miss a really convincing tier 1 spell. Elementalism - well yes Maelstrom is very good, but with Fire from the palace it loses a lot of appeal. So I still lean Death/Entropy.

Always bear in mind that Ingenuity lets you upgrade for half price. You can build warriors and pay the discounted upgrade cost to get swordsmen. Long term, the discount should be very helpful when upgrading adepts to mages.

So we could build just one training yard and upgrade warriors to axes there... however even with the trait it will strain our research towards Sorcery which should still be the overarching goal.

Each sage bulbs 1000 beakers + total population, so ~1050 by the time Sorcery is available. Sorcery was showing as just more than 2000 beakers in your sim, which probably doesn't have the correct map size. So, under the giant assumption that tech costs won't change too much, there should be very little wasted production from a pair of great sages.

I did set the correct nominal map size, so tech costs from the sim do hold up

The Pact is a very cost effective way of putting some very strong units on the field; it's harder to use the hidden nationality tricks against humans than against AIs, but it could still come in handy. City costs scale pretty quickly with number of cities, and I'd expect to have to change to City States at about 7 cities.

I think if Mining shows copper in a convenient place it is really hard to argue against BW, and then probably someone else gets the Pact (and we may not want yet another detour, although, would we need the civic before Sorcery?). But yes an option to keep in mind.

Yes, command posts used to be buildable for 80 hammers for an ORG civ, and required a Great Commander for everyone else; a quick glance at the XML indicates that should still be the case. Testing in-game would still be a good idea before building a strategy around them.

Ok, we can think about that when we get our bulb ready. Form of the Titan + Apprenticeship + Cave + Command Post gives 10 XP even with just the starting mana, just saying...

One more revision for the start: Growing to size 5 full speed is better on all accounts- the EC comes a turn later, but we end up with more beakers researched, more turns worked the sage, and well the additional pop, with the same eot21 settler. FPH with Godking are pretty good.


ah and since the other day you asked, there are 821 land tiles. Need to find out yet how bulky that is distributed,.

[Ginger*]

I never really got into playing FFH or EitB in singleplayer, so I just dont have a good idea of what's good.
Unlike base civ where I have a sort of passive understanding of the tempo rates and combat trade expectations, I have absolutely nothing to offer this team, but I'm lurking and reading :D