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

[Selrahc]

Roll up, roll up, to Selrahc's brand new FFH thread, featuring Bobchillingworth and the Reverend Doctor.

Since this is the first post and nothing meaningful can occur I think I'll end it now. See below, for all the juicy information that the other teams aren't allowed to know.


Although this image may give readers a handy hint

[Selrahc]

From ice to fire!


This is our friend. Bernie the Flame. Remember kids.. playing with fire is fun!

We're playing aggressive Sheaim, with a side helping of ingenuity. Our initial plan should be pretty clear. We're going to build as many warriors and pyre zonbies as we possibly can, and use them to take over the world. Nice and simple.

However, we do have a second phase to this plan. And its one that you might not have expected for the Sheaim.


The new adventures of Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit. In this episode, BMX Bandit will be replaced by thousands of flaming corpses

Yep. We're going to use the Armageddon cult to attempt to summon the Angels.

The initial plan was to pick Alexis, and use philosophical to lightbulb along the way to Fanatacism. Financial should be almost as good for this purpose however, and since humans are allowed to play as both the angels and their summoners, I'd rather leave the Sheaim in as good a condition as possible, for either Bob or the Reverend to take over.

No arcane focus. No Armageddon counter usage. Lots and lots of zombies. Big powerful angel ally. Sound like a plan? Good. Now lets all go burn down the world.

[Selrahc]

Weirdly enough the picture from my other thread comes up as the first result when doing an image search on Kandros

Kandros Fir is an awesome leader that's really all you need to know. But perhaps I should give a more detailed analysis.

His traits are Aggressive, Financial and Ingenuity. Each one is going to be very useful.
The value of Aggressive is obvious. Combat 1 pyre zombies are scary, able to win one on one, or by exploding.
Financial will give us the long term research power to reach Angels. And it allows the awesome aristograrian combo to really shine.
Ingenuity is a slightly more devilish dog, but can have some real use. Firstly, it gives a lump sum of gold. Never a bad thing! Secondly, half price upgrades. This means we can mass produce warriors, then upgrade them to Pyre Zombies en masse. Could be the key to getting enough Pyre Zombies together for the early rushes.

[Selrahc]

Short thoughts on opposing civs. I'll get up a proper work up later.


Sciz: Dain the Caswallan of the Grigori
Not too impressed with this pick.. but its alright. Arcane doesn't help the heroes at all, but it does mean that when going up the arcane line to eventually get heroic archmages, he'll be able to get a lot of mage support.

The obvious strategy is to use heroes to take out barb cities and handle much of the defence, while teching up.

Hero rushing is a solid and useful strategy against peaceful civs, but against the Sheaim, Clan of Embers and Illians I can't see it working, although heroes will be good at defending against anything but pyre zombies.

Personally I think Alexis would have been a better choice, since the early game is going to be harder work.

Ravus Sol: Non-Agnostic Illians
Illians without Auric can pick religions. Solid use of the unrestricted leaders setting to pick a gameplay that would ordinarily be unavailable. I'll be expecting the standard priest rush, followed by focus on the religious line.

We all know what rat bastards the Illians are to have as neighbours, but I think we'll be able to get pyre zombies up before they priest rush. The priests will be generally useful after the Rush phase, because there isn't a barb city alive that can stand up to the Priests. Should allow quick, cheap expansion. Better than Rantine.

Starting with 2 settlers is a double boon for the Illians as they'll get the standard early game Stasis off, but have twice as much productivity as they otherwise would. Very beneficial.

Ichabod: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers

Brothers of the flame! Obviously the lure of playing barbs in a barbarian world was too much for Ichabod. Should give him a relatively hassle free start, but I think we can take down those orcs without too much trouble, whether Barb or Barb Lite.

Jonas Endain as his leader pick was very odd though. In a no settlers game I'd peg Sheelba as clearly the better of the two.. since expansive loses most of its value. Um... The only semi sane reason I can think of is that he'll be pushing Disciple units for all they're worth.



Dantski: Cassiel(Phi/Fin) of the Svartalfar

Set up pretty well for maximum technology. But... a civ with no war traits in a world where every other civ is an early rusher? Easy target, who'll have to work hard to survive. I'm predicting an early exit.

[Bobchillingworth]

Checking in!


Kandros looks like a total pimp. An aggressive, ingeniously financial pimp with a den of iniquity full of flaming zombies.

Weirdly enough the picture from my other thread comes up as the first result when doing an image search on Kandros

The picture of Auric for FFH Adventure 2 came from your thread as well. I used Google image search, and didn't realize that it had taken me to RB until I X'd out the image and realized what website I was on. I didn't stick around to read any spoilers, tho :P



raaar

I'll share my thoughts on the competitors after they've all chosen. For now, I think you've covered a lot of what makes your pick awesome, and what the strategy will be. Aggressive Pyre zombies simply have no real counter until either HA (which cost twice as much- actually even more, since you have ingenuity), or Life II mages. They're excellent on both the offense and defense, and if someone tries to rush you before then, aggressive warriors are fantastic early defenders as well.

Basium is just icing on an awesome cake, giving an iron for either his angels or your zombies, a chance to build a new set of religious heroes, making it much easier to get a cultural victory, raising the AC when Basium spawns, and perhaps best of all screwing over anyone who goes for the Veil (you get a higher AC) or one of the Good religions (Basium gets angels!). Plus it blocks your opponents from deploying the civ probably best suited to oppose the Sheaim, what with the Mercurian's nasty worldspell and free life mana. Oh and you get a second Tower of Divination tech.


I had joked in our planning conversations that you should go for the Empyrean religion for maximum canon bastardization, but now that I think about it, you really should. You're going to want to found at least one Good religion to supply angels for Basium, and the idea of pairing Pyre Zombies with Sun II Radiant Guard makes me giddy.


Basium does well with either the Order or Runes, if possible he might want to play around with the Veil just to get the Grimoire built. From my limited experience playing as the Mercurians, getting to warhorses seems like a priority; their flying angelic war-chariot things have no counter, ever. The best unit I ever had in any FFH game was a Valin who died with about 1,000 exp, was reborn as an angel, took a bunch of melee-line only promos, and was upgraded into a Ophanim. Probably unlikely that you'll get something similar, but they're amazing units regardless.

[Selrahc]

I think all of the T4 angel units are really fantastic. My personal favourite would be the Angel of Death. Invisible assassin, except with much more strength, higher speed and can take cities. And as with the Ophanim, you can give it useful promotions from the Melee line before promoting it into recon. And just as a topper ... when it attacks a city it reduces the population by 1.

[Bobchillingworth]

Okay, now that Ravus has picked, a have a few thoughts on the feasibility for attacking each of your opponents with PZ. I have ranked them on a score of 1-5, with 5 being the easiest to assault.


Ravus: 2/5. His worldspell will block you from bringing in reinforcements, or possibly prevent you from being able to rush until he's prepared, depending on when he deploys it. The Priests of Winter will die to PZ like anything else, but with their ice elementals Ravus can attempt to pick off and soak up the zombies. The free mobility on the priests also means that he can do hit & run attacks with them in melee combat, and their Medic II allows his to heal them up quickly. Probably the least optimal target of your four opponents, but nothing insurmountable. There's only so much that three powerful units can do against a horde of combustible undead. As for the pick itself, Varn of the Illians seems pretty solid to me, no criticisms here.


Sciz: 3/5. Heroes are the main obstacle here, and he will almost certainly have (at least potentially) a couple heroic axes by the time you attack. Killing his heroes takes away his main advantage though, which makes throwing away a few extra PZ entirely worthwhile. I'm not sure what the point of Arcane is for him, it's redundant with the normal heroic exp growth if he's trying to rush for twincasters. Alexis would have made a lot more sense, or Einon.


Ichabod: 4/5. As you pointed out, Jonas makes no sense whatsoever as a leader choice. Seriously, if you're going to spam units and have lots of scattered, isolated, distant cities... Shelba is pretty much made for this sort of game. You should be able to easily surpass him in tech, and if he wastes hammers on early warrens then it's basically just lots of free exp for you. Worldspell could pose a slight issue if he is able to pull a lot of goblin archers for defense, but PZ will still eat them if you promote to Cover.


Dantski: 4/5. Heck yeah, this is a combo made for PZ rushing. Zero military qualities. Hunters at strength 5 offense will hurt, but aggressive should give you even odds with Apprenticeship, and winning odds with copper. The best thing is that PZ death explosions ignite forests, so when you die you not only screw up his attackers but also ruin his economy! I have no idea what Dantski is planning with this combo. Cassiel is good, but the Ljo would be better for econ, with their better worldspell and earlier hero to protect them.



Honestly, I think that PZ will eat pretty much everyone, but especially the later two

[Selrahc]

I'd agree with that analysis but I think you missed a point. The Clan are mainly orcs, which gives them 25% fire resistance. That is a major headache in any attack on them since the amount of explosion damage and the base strength of the zombies will both be reduced.

I'd also say that the Illians become a really easy target if we get a confirmed report of priest movements. If we know that their priests are attacking one neighbour, we could move in and crush them before they can return. It was something I had to take pains to address in PBEM 1, making as sure as I could that I wouldn't have opportunists moving in to the homestead during the Priest grand tour. Well... we could easily be those opportunists I was so scared of.

[The Reverend Doctor]

Hey!

Dedicated lurker who will probably ask more questions than contribute anything meaningful checking in.

First things first: Great thread title. Kandros Inferno has a nice ring to it.

I think this pick has great potential. Half-price markets and +1 commerce aristofarms to keep us afloat while building plenty of aggressive pyre zombies and then eliciting the help of the angels? That'll be fun.

The only downside I can think of is that even though we'll have 50 gold in the bank to start thanks to ingenuity, we start out neutral as Kandros and won't be able to take advantage of either free Great Prophet event should they pop up.

I don't have much of anything to add about the opponents.

Clan is a good choice but, as you said, Jonas' saving grace is that he can usually build quick settlers while not worrying about barbs. Not so here. What was decided about Acheron? Getting lucky and using the worldspell for a couple Sons of Inferno right after he spawns could cause problems.

The svartalfar are definitely going to get picked on this game. Their strategies take too long to develop and as Bob mentioned our bread and butter unit can burn down their precious forests (and don't forget that event that spawns mistforms from forests that are smoking).

I'm thinking the Illians sans Auric as their leader could be the most difficult to beat of the others. That worldspell combined with a leader with good traits is something to watch out for.

[Selrahc]

What was decided about Acheron?

Preplaced somewhere.

The only downside I can think of is that even though we'll have 50 gold in the bank to start thanks to ingenuity, we start out neutral as Kandros and won't be able to take advantage of either free Great Prophet event should they pop up.

Yeah, Bob's already reserved the right to gloat over that one.



Here are my thoughts on religion.

Of the civs in the game, it looks like we're going to have an unusual focus on religious technology. Jonas Endain really has to focus on priests and religion to take advantage of his only useful trait. The same goes almost double for the Illians, who'll want to be taking advantage of being able to use a religion for once. The Elves also obviously have a big incentive to get to at least priesthood. And we will obviously be pushing for religious techs on the way to fanatacism. The only civ that doesn't care about religion much is the Grigori.

Despite this I don't think we'll have much competition when it comes to picking a religion.

The Clan are going to be researching far too slowly to beat us to any religion unless they put a massive focus on it. Even if they do, it's possible that they may take a religion we are not interested in. Ashen Veil, or Octopus Overlords for example both of which work decently with the Clan.

The Svartalfar are going to be going for Leaves, at least in the early running. We'll have time to pick out our chosen religion before they would even consider switching.

The Illians however have a real potential chance at stealing a religion we would aim for. Ravus Sol has expressed an interest in playing "The Good Illians" so it is highly likely he will be aiming for Runes, Empyrean or Order. And with both stasis and financial working for him, it becomes very probable that he will found whichever he picks.

So, with that in mind which religion are we going to pick? I honestly haven't decided. Any of the three good religions could work and here are some pros and cons.

1. Runes of Kilmorph.
Pros:
Iron for pyre zombies
General Economic advantage
Easy to switch out of
Early hero
Very early on the tech tree
Good unique civic
Very good Temple

Cons:
Not much use out of either soldiers or paramanders
Fairly weak priest
Probably a lot of competition to get it
Awful second hero

2. Order

Pros
Boosts military production
Early and powerful hero, late and powerful hero
Priests are useful
High priests are excellent economically
Decent unique civic
Fast spread

Cons
Switches alignment to good, which means no slavery
Probably less competition to get it
Low economic benefit
Unique units are lacklustre

3. Empyrean

Pros
Very good temple
Very good high priests
Very good hero
Very good unique units (Sun magic!)

Cons
Poor priests except in specific circumstances
Late on tech tree (Possibly for use after summoning Basium?)
No unique civic


Obviously we're going to be deciding finally based on the events of the game, but does anyone have an early preference for any of these three?