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I think I will add my veto power here, and say we will have no sparkly vampires!
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Looks like we guessed right, they went horsey
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Jkaen Wrote:Looks like we guessed right, they went horsey
Yep, the horsey civs do go well together.
So, thoughts on our gameplan - mostly stream of consciousness here.
- Land division - Malakim get desert/floodplains, and production heavy areas. Calabim get food rich areas that aren't floodplains. We'll probably not want to interleave too much, for maintenance reasons, but definitely warp the empire in this general direction anyway.
- With AW, we'll want bronze working fairly early, so that warrior spam can keep us alive, and Moroi can start harrassing the foes. After that, it's going to be an interesting question whether we shoot for Priesthood or Feudalism. And we'll put in as much econ as we can before that. Right now, I'm leaning Priesthood first; Priests ought to be sufficient for a while and easier to get to, and the world spell provides nice insurance. The one thing we *can't* afford is to pursue both at once.
- Speaking of world spell - anyone know if River of Blood affects teammates? If it hurts you too, probably should fire it Turn 1; if it helps you too, probably should fire it as soon as we're size 3.
- Code of Laws is a wonderful place full of happiness and joy! Aristograrianism, and Governor's Manors to make food rich areas production heavy too!
- Mysticism, on the other hand, Vamps don't really want but Malakim really want. This one's going to be a bit trickier.
- Arcane magic? I say mostly skip it. Maybe it'd be worth getting some adept spells going, or being able eventually to build Towers of Light and maybe summon Sand Lions, but neither of us is good with it, and it's not that strong anyway. Getting mages - the only way I can see managing that is Malakim upgrading Savants that way. And vamps are much better Channelling II casters anyway.
- Religions - Yes! Many! Ok, at least RoK and AV, to give Lightbringers something to do early, and Ring of Flames for late (and StW for Vamps). Adding in more is quite possible depending on situation; OO might be tactically useful, Order or Empy have their role, etc. While the Malakim swap around with abandon, Calabim will probably start with RoK, then swap to AV and never swap again. StW is too powerful when food is all.
- Lightbringers make good scouts and sentries, although the hammer cost is annoying. Probably should go for them anyway
- To the tech list, we really ought to add Sanitation. Most vampiric power is derived from food in the end.
- Gotta remember, once it's an option, every lvl 6 unit on our side becomes a vampire. +10% str and +5% heal is minor, but free!
- Foes: Thoth/Yellow might be very annoying early, with the Clan. They'll certainly be going for at least one choke. If we can get beyond that, they'll probably be irrelevant before they make it to Arcane Lore
- Ichabod/Ravus - horses scare me. They have the nice synergy of armies, including the Kurio fast defenders. If they go Tasunke, we have a similar position to the Clan, except that Warcry might kill if we're not careful. If they go Rhoanna, they'll be a long term threat instead
- Darrell/Ilios - dangerous pretty much all game, no one period stands out. Well, maybe the very late game, the full power of a developed elven econ is scary. Fortunately they provide another target for the Clan/Hippus hordes.
- We're pretty well focused on midgame. We don't have much that will worry people until we make it to vamps and priests, but once we get there we should start dominating. I don't see much point in harrassing people early - and I don't see much ability to do so, either.
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Pretty much agree with the above, only comment is on arcane that we will want to get necromancy to spam death nodes everywhere we can for your spectres
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Ok, may as well look intot he opponents in more depth
Ichabod/Ravus - Kuriotates (Exp/Phi/Ada) and Hippus (Agg/Raid)
Suprised by the leader choice on the Hippus, going very much down the attack dog/techer route. Obviously their main army is going to be very quick, but not sure where their collateral is coming from (PB's was relgious heros which they may struggle getting this game)
Think we need to have a nice scout net up to detected any raids, but there is no way they can keep up with our tech rate, so an early (warcried warrior) or mid game threat.
Thoth/Mr. Yellow - Clan (Barb/Agg/Org) and Amurites (Phi/Arc)
Warrened Settlers means its going to grow crazy fast, and I believe its been confirmed that cities can be changed after they get planted, so the clan with be on settler duty.
No techer at all though (and barb having the -10% for the team too!) means I can't really see them being a factor unless they manage a choke and over expand everybody else
Darrell/Ilios Ljosalfar (Cre/Spi) and Khazad (Agg/Fin)
This is I think the mose worrying team. 2 good players, and if they are left alone they could give our tech speed a run for its money. Also will be trying to compete on RoK and FoL I would expect, would like to beat them to at least one of them
Will be a pretty slow army, so hopefully we can outmanouver them. This is the only team I think we could possibly consider trying to choke if we were to end up next to them
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Couple more thoughts, I know our research is shared in a team game, but do we keep our own GPP tally?
If so I am thinking mine needs to be pretty much pure priest, for religion bulbing, and for altars (to beef up my units, and to give us an alternate victory method if needs be)
The other question is poppables near our borders, I am thinking:
Huts - Pop
Ruins - Pop, its a risk, but so is spawns of lizardmen
Dungeons - Leave till its safe
Graves - On the border here, skelies are not as scary if we leave them alone, but the results dont tend to be as bad either
Mega-dungeons - Leave till its safe.
Its more cautious than my usual approach, but here if you mess up its your teammates game not just yours in trouble (dont want to get mistformed again! Even if it was not me who released it)
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Another small point on magic, is I was checking out the towers, and how our palace mana matched up:
Alteration (Spell Resistance): Body, Life, Nature, Enchantment
Divination (Free Tech): Law, Mind, Sun, Spirit
Necro (Death Mana, Stronger Undead): Chaos, Death, Entro, Shadow
Elemental (Crappy Elemental): Water, Earth, Fire, Air
Hence we are 1 tech off Divination and a free tech which may be worth looking at. Necro would obviously also help with your spectres
Alteration I doubt its worth bothering with, although we are halfway there, and elemental is useless to us
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Jkaen Wrote:Hence we are 1 tech off Divination and a free tech which may be worth looking at. Necro would obviously also help with your spectres
Yep, I agree - but really we're going to have to wait until we get closer before we can judge these.
I believe the elemental tower's main benefit is granting Strong (+1Str) to all elementals, not the free one it summons.
EitB 25 - Perpentach
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Jkaen Wrote:Couple more thoughts, I know our research is shared in a team game, but do we keep our own GPP tally?
If so I am thinking mine needs to be pretty much pure priest, for religion bulbing, and for altars (to beef up my units, and to give us an alternate victory method if needs be) Probably? I should probably start a test hotseat game to see how this, and a number of other questions, works in practice. In particular, what I'm curious about is tech costs - do they scale with team size, or are we looking at a twice normal rate tech game? In which case choosing mid-game instead of early-game leaders will work out pretty well for us.
Jkaen Wrote:The other question is poppables near our borders, I am thinking:
Huts - Pop
Ruins - Pop, its a risk, but so is spawns of lizardmen
Dungeons - Leave till its safe
Graves - On the border here, skelies are not as scary if we leave them alone, but the results dont tend to be as bad either
Mega-dungeons - Leave till its safe.
Its more cautious than my usual approach, but here if you mess up its your teammates game not just yours in trouble (dont want to get mistformed again! Even if it was not me who released it) Hmm. Actually - I'm thinking it's the other way around, we should be more aggressive than usual with these. Mostly for this reason: Always War. Certainly we should pop any lairs we find near our opponents - but because they'll do the same to us, we should at least try to get the benefits from doing so instead of letting them turn it into 'heads I win tails you lose'.
But in a normal game, popping lairs near an opponent will damage relations, maybe take you all the way to war...well, we're already there. What more do they have to fear?
EitB 25 - Perpentach
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Oh, anything near opponents I agree we pop regardless, just thinking of those close to us in our back lines, but as you say others may slip past us and pop them anyway, so why not let us control the risk.
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