Learning Capria FFH SG

[haphazard1]

Strength 24? I assume "spamming hunters for a counterattack" is code for "wastes tons of hammers promoting Acheron"?

The Sons of the Inferno sound pretty nasty though. And if they come out in stacks for raids...ouch.

[Hart]

Strength 24? I assume "spamming hunters for a counterattack" is code for "wastes tons of hammers promoting Acheron"?

The Sons of the Inferno sound pretty nasty though. And if they come out in stacks for raids...ouch.

I've never seen them do that. Acheron's positioning is enough of pain that I tend to turn off his spawn flag in the map settings. If you happen to lose a single city to the barbarians, and Acheron spawns in that city, BEFORE TURN 100, you lose interest in the map pretty quickly.

[Hart]

Okay, I've played 1 turn so far, and the general plan is as follows (I don't know when I'll play the rest today, got a few things to do):

I like the idea of getting Fishing after BW. It lifts the health cap in Bologna, gives Salamanca its own source of food, and puts us on the path to settling Golden down the line. We don't *really* need Stonewardens to attack Os-Gabella, although it would be useful. I think HBR should be the next tech to get after Fishing, though. That gives us enough time to have a reasonable number of Axemen before getting Horsemen out, and opens up the Mobility promotion - assuming we haven't already promoted our Axemen.

Bologna continues to build Thanes until BW comes in on t115. It will need to finish 1 Thane for a turn after this, but hopefully another chop will come in on this turn (or the next) to see the extra hammers go into a Training Yard. Alfred Bester will head to Salamanca to help out building mines and stuff.

Salamanca will continue to borrow the sheep AND the farm from Paris until it reaches size 4, in 6 turns. This lines up nicely with the ETA on the Monument, and the Mine 1S of the city. This also lines up (roughly) with getting Fishing.

Oxford has been micro'd to finish its Elder Council in 2 turns, and will commence building a Temple of Kilmorph the following turn. After this, it will produce Thanes. The worker plan here is to finish the Wines, road, and the cottage, then build the Farm. However, the tile assignments are not at all clear: Wines + Silk? I think Wines, Copper and the Hamlet will suffice for the time being.

Paris will continue to tend its cottages until Salamanca grows to size 4. At this point it might reclaim the Sheep and Farm to grow up to size 7.

A note on Thane usage: we only get happiness from our religion if we switch to the Religion civic, which is nuts if we're going to spam Axes in Bologna. As such I agree with holding off on putting RoK into Paris.. but could Salamanca use a temple? Either way I think I might hold off on Salamanca too.

A note on the elves: wasn't Jonas's scout to the west? I think it much more likely that he's somewhere in that direction rather than further east...

[haphazard1]

A note on the elves: wasn't Jonas's scout to the west? I think it much more likely that he's somewhere in that direction rather than further east...

Is it even possible to determine Endain's location from a scout? Assuming he cast his world spell (and I assume he did), then the scout might have been a claimed barb. Or was it an actual scout? Don't know if the Clan can get those from their world spell.

[Hart]

Is it even possible to determine Endain's location from a scout? Assuming he cast his world spell (and I assume he did), then the scout might have been a claimed barb. Or was it an actual scout? Don't know if the Clan can get those from their world spell.

I'm not sure - don't really remember.

[kjn]

Doing the general questions first.

Wait what? Pretty sure it immediately converts all forests into treants, be they Ancient or otherwise. You are right about it becoming much stronger over time, though.

Ancient and regular forests spawn treants; new forests don't. And the Ljosalfar need Way of the Forests to use their world spell. Having Fellowship of Leaves as the state religion is what will trigger regular forests to become Ancient.

In one game of mine, the Calabim didn't follow FoL (though they had earlier), but did have an ancient forest, which spawned a treant when I moved into it.

I understand Acheron is a dragon and gaurds the Horde, but don't really know much more about him. Does he just sit there until someone attacks him, or will there be units being sent out periodically, like barb cities will build and send out stacks of units from time to time?

Pretty much, yes. The units sent from Acheron's lair are just regular barbs, however, except that they will have the Enchanted blade promotion.

How does one go about fighting pyre zombies? Os-Gabella has been massacring Perpentach in my current solo game with pyre zombies, as the Balseraphs don't have anything but melee units. The PZs explode if killed when attacking, does the same happen if they are defending? If so, how do you defeat a stack of them without taking massive splash damage?

Destroy undead is the best counter. High-mobility units (like horsemen) can move in, attack, and move back, and thus only expose a single unit at a time to the explosions. Exposable summons works, of course.

Collateral also works if you only have slow-movers - Maelstrom is probably best, but catapults can also work (but expect to lose them). Then your actual combat units will only face very weak defenders. They will take damage from the explosions, but no or little actual combat damage. Unused promotions can be used for instant healing.

But the AI has a terrible time dealing with a stack of Pyre Zombies.

[kjn]

Looking at the various graphs, I am concerned about Jonas Endain's continuing growth and power. Where are the Clan located (direction, distance)? It would very bad to be in the middle of a war with Os-Gabella and have the orcs show up....

No idea, really. We met him on turn 18-19 by the Sepulchre (2N of the incense), and he had a single Orc warrior there, who seemed to have moved west from the Sepulchre.

Checking the turn log, there is no mention of any world spells being cast. If that is true, his position might be to the southwest, ie in the area south of Golden.

Doing movement-into-fog with the warrior from turn 19 gives that Bologna is pretty central on the map: maybe 17 tiles north, 20 tiles south, 20 tiles to our east, and 30 to our west.

Also, Amelanchier has shown a very scary spike in the power graph. His production has been mostly flat, so I am not sure what this might be? Could he have teched Bronze Working and have copper for his warriors? Surely Gilden is not enough for all that power.

Gilden was created on turn 75 or so, and shows as a spike then. And yes, I've wondered too. It's not equipping warriors with bronze weapons, though, that doesn't show up in the graphs.

In this game (Acheron's) location is REALLY ANNOYING. If there's any good land in that direction (I hope there is), then we're probably going to be locked in to our part of the continent until we can find a way through whatever his territory is. It would seem likely that the city in question was originally Amelanchier's - maybe he's going to start spamming Hunters for a counter attack?

If my map analysis is correct, Acheron is shuffled off close to a map edge.

And Acheron is usually built in "original" barb cities, in my experience. Checking Amelanchier's graphs, he doesn't have any losses in score, and the losses in crop yields maps to increases in production. So pretty sure it's not a former Ljosalfar city.

Paris will continue to tend its cottages until Salamanca grows to size 4. At this point it might reclaim the Sheep and Farm to grow up to size 7.

If you wait that long, then you can run max science until then. Then go into build-and-grow-mode in Paris with max gold, assigning as many cottages to Bologna and Salamanca as possible. Or we can wait until Fishing is in.

Your other plans look solid. Mobility I is a very good promotion, but I don't think it will make that much difference in our initial operational tempo (well, it will make a big difference for reinforcements): there are lots of forests and hills in Os-Gabella's land.

Stage on the copper tile. Invade by going E-SE. Then move 2SE. Invade Galveholm on turn T4 of the war.

With Mobility I we could move E-2SE, then SE onto the sheep, and hit Galveholm on T3 of the war. Our units will be weaker, though (no Shock as the second promotion). Fog-gazing into the tiles around Galveholm also tells me most of them have forests.

A note on Thane usage: we only get happiness from our religion if we switch to the Religion civic, which is nuts if we're going to spam Axes in Bologna. As such I agree with holding off on putting RoK into Paris.. but could Salamanca use a temple? Either way I think I might hold off on Salamanca too.

Good thinking - I think my builder tendencies got the better of me. Yes, Salamanca doesn't need a thane that much either. It's +3 gold in the end, but we can hold out for a natural spread. Our attack on Os-Gabella can always use an extra thane.

A note on the elves: wasn't Jonas's scout to the west? I think it much more likely that he's somewhere in that direction rather than further east...

Yes. I think he is in the unexplored land to our southwest. We need to get some stronger scouting units out there - Horsemen, Hunters+Hawks, or even a Galley or Trireme.

[Hart]

Ljosalfar need Way of the Forests to use their world spell.

How can I have been playing this game for so long, playing Ljos exclusively for a large portion of that time, and not read this Civopedia entry?

[kjn]

Oxford has been micro'd to finish its Elder Council in 2 turns, and will commence building a Temple of Kilmorph the following turn. After this, it will produce Thanes. The worker plan here is to finish the Wines, road, and the cottage, then build the Farm. However, the tile assignments are not at all clear: Wines + Silk? I think Wines, Copper and the Hamlet will suffice for the time being.

Forgot this earlier.

I think Oxford makes for an excellent hybrid. Targeting for size 7, we get:

Farm, copper, wines, city tile for +5F, 5H, 5C. Add mine and three cottages for size 7, for +4F, 8H, 9+C. Add another mine SE of the silk, and we have decent flexibility.

Incidentally, it has 5 grass hills, and can easily add another farm SE of the copper for fast growth. And it can work 11 grassland cottages once we remove that extra farm. I'm real happy we put Oxford there, and not 1NE as we first thought.

[haphazard1]

Destroy undead is the best counter. High-mobility units (like horsemen) can move in, attack, and move back, and thus only expose a single unit at a time to the explosions. Exposable summons works, of course.

Collateral also works if you only have slow-movers - Maelstrom is probably best, but catapults can also work (but expect to lose them). Then your actual combat units will only face very weak defenders. They will take damage from the explosions, but no or little actual combat damage. Unused promotions can be used for instant healing.

But the AI has a terrible time dealing with a stack of Pyre Zombies.

Thanks for the info. I have some mages who can take Destroy Undead, so I should be able to deal with the PZs if Os-Gabella decides to come for my cities. And my PoL can spam tigers if needed. Are fire balls effective against pyre zombies? I am not sure if fire would affect them or not, since they are already burning and all.

On Jonas Endain, it seems odd that his world spell does not show in the log. For The Horde seems like it is designed for very eary use.

Also, does power rating not include the effects of bronze (and presumably iron and mithril) weapons? I thought unit strength was part of the calculation? Or is it just x amount of power for a given unit type, regardless of its adjusted base strength? Seems more than a bit inaccurate if that is not counted, considering how big a difference bronze makes early on.