Green as they come: Hiding Kneel plays the Ljosalfar [SPOILERS]

[HidingKneel]

So, I'll start by settling that free shade as a bard. That should synergize well with my creative trait for quick border pops! Then it's straight to astronomy for the celestial compass, which I'll use to score an early pact of the Nilhorn. Once I've got the stooges on board, it should be easy sailing to a conquest victory.

Questions? No? Good.

[HidingKneel]

Welcome all!



In this epic thread, I will record the histories of Arendel Phaedra, Queen of the Summer Court, as she leads the Ljosalfar people into a new age.

So, I'm a relative newcomer here at RB. Been lurking the Fall from Heaven threads for a few months now, but this is my first time actually playing a game (actually my first PBEM of any kind). But don't worry: what I lack in experience, I will make up in enthusiasm. I'll set my sights on victory, but if if that's not to be, I intend to make it an entertaining defeat.

What dangers and wonders await the elven people as they struggle to survive on Erebus? How long can they hope to survive amidst their many enemies? Can Hiding Kneel actually figure out how to post images to the forum? And do I really intend a beeline to the Celestial Compass? There's only one way to find out...

[HidingKneel]

So, Commodore has graciously agreed to sign on as a dedlurker for this game. To kick things off, I hope he won't mind my sharing his initial thoughts:

Hey HK, dedlurker checking in. I figured you'll make the thread once the picks come in, but I'm curious, what were your plans? Given the setup obviously the Kurios are borderline broken with two cities, a worker, and a GM to start with, but I had also noticed that the Lurchiurp get a big boost with the mud golem start helping their early worker bottleneck.
[Mumble mumble mumble.]
-Commodore

To be honest, I didn't give much thought to the game format when I made the call. I just made a list of the leaders that I found to be most fun in the SP game, and was lucky enough to get my first pick.

On the Kurios: I'm inclined to think exactly the opposite. Cardith is expansive, so under normal circumstances you'd expect him to get his first settler out and his second megapolis founded before everyone else. So I think that starting everyone with a second settler cuts into that advantage a bit.

It seems like most of the maps around here tend to be reasonably generous in the starting locations, and that's something which definitely benefits the Kuriotates. I'd expect this (and the free settler) to translate to an early lead for Yell0w, but we'll have to see what he makes of it in the long run.

On the Luchuirp I definitely agree with you: the free starting units would benefit them a lot. It also makes the "rush masonry, pop worldspell ASAP" strategy twice as effective as usual. I toyed with the idea of going with Garrim Gyr and aiming to rush the Mercurian Gate, but there were four or five other gameplans that sounded like more fun.

Gameplan? Oh, right. I should starting putting together some thoughts on that. But first things first. Dear lurkers, what should we be doing with our free shade? Of course, this should probably depend on what our start looks like. Erebus continent seems to like to stick the Ljosalfar in commerce-poor forests, so a free great sage could really speed up the pre-education slog.
I'm guessing it won't be as much of an issue on this map, though.

[Commodore]

Gameplan? Oh, right. I should starting putting together some thoughts on that. But first things first. Dear lurkers, what should we be doing with our free shade? Of course, this should probably depend on what our start looks like. Erebus continent seems to like to stick the Ljosalfar in commerce-poor forests, so a free great sage could really speed up the pre-education slog.
I'm guessing it won't be as much of an issue on this map, though.

Well, as always, it's going to be dependent on the start. A sage is certainly an attractive notion, but it depends on what the primary bottleneck is. GE or even a GM might help push out more workers sooner, which could be a better science return if there are commerce resources nearby to hook up. The GM enabling 100% research would possibly be even more efficient than the GS, depending on how long God King is on the table, which if I understand correctly, is often longer than normal for elves.

In general, I guess it's an if-then set:

IF bottleneck == workers; THEN engineer
IF bottleneck == expenses/food; THEN merchant
IF bottleneck == beakers; THEN scientist

And yes, that's terrible code. I'm a physicist who works as a systems engineer, not a programmer.

Also, and most vitally: Theme?

[HidingKneel]

So here's the post where I give our leader and civ a proper introduction.
Just in case anybody happens upon this thread who isn't already a Fall from Heaven junkie.

We will be playing as Arendel Phraedra of the Ljosalfar.
On which the FFH wiki had this to say:

Allegiance: Ljosalfar
Race: Elven
Alignment: Good
Favorite Civic: Aristocracy
Favorite Wonder: Temple of Temporance
Traits: Creative, Spiritual

That's right: our favorite civic is aristocracy, which we will probably never adopt, and our favorite wonder is the Temple of Temporance, which we will almost certainly never build (and you wonder why the AI is so bad at this game).

Of course, the important part of all that is our traits:

Creative: Free culture in all our cities, and double speed production of carnivals and monuments. Of course, the whole point of that free culture is that it means we never have to build any monuments. Which is a nice perk in the early game, where culture is hard to come by. The half-priced carnivals are mainly an afterthought. We might end up building a few of those in key cities, particularly if we manage to catch some animals.

Spiritual: Doubles the production speed of temples and pagan temples, all our disciple units start with mobility and potency,
and we can swap civics and religions with no anarchy. This trait is fantastic: probably the best one after financial. It'll make priests the centerpiece of our game.

Our civilization is the Ljosalfar. Here's what the wiki has to say on them:

Leaders: Amelanchier, Arendel Phaedra, Thessa
Heroes: Gilden Silveric
Race: Elven
Allignment: Neutral
Patron God: Cernunnos
Emblematic Mana: Nature Mana
Totem Animal: Deer
Enemies: Svartalfar, Illians
World Spell: March of the Trees
Unique Quality: Thrive in Forests

"Thrive in Forests" is putting it mildly. The elven civilizations have the unique ability to build improvements over forest tiles. What's more, after adopting Fellowship of Leaves, we'll be able to bloom forests everywhere, and even convert them into ancient forests, which offer extra food even before improvements. Build cottages everywhere, and you can have a crazy strong economy.

Of course, all this takes time to get going. Quite a bit of time, in fact. What the wiki apparently doesn't want you to know is that elves are lazy. What with their thousand-year lifespans and all, "carpe diem" isn't a concept that they seem to get. What this means in-game is that elven workers take longer to build improvements. So we'll be off to a slow start: our advantages won't start to really kick in until we research Way of the Forests
and later priesthood (for priests who can create forest tiles).

So, what else? Mana-wise, we start with life, nature, and air. Life is situationally useful: good for fighting off pyre zombies (which we won't be seeing in this game), and we definitely want to keep hell terrain away from our precious, precious forests. Nature mana is less so. Air will let our mages cast maelstrom, which is a decent source of collateral. Especially important since elves can't build siege units. But since we're spiritual, I'm more inclined to meet our collateral damage needs with cultists and ritualists.

Our civ trait is dextrous, which gives a bonus point of attack strength to all archery units. Sort of underwhelming; why would we be using archery units on offense, anyway?

Our world spell is March of the Trees, which will spawn an angry treant (under our control) on every forest tile in our empire. The treants have ten points of strength and last for five turns, and can pretty much stop an invading army in its tracks. The downside is that it reverts all of our forests to new forests, probably leading to famine and crippling our economy. I've found it to be a great "panic button" if you're invaded by a superior opponent in SP, since you can usually wipe out the invaders and then try to hit them before they can rebuild. Probably a lot less useful in MP, since everyone will know what they're getting into. Still a very useful deterrent in the midgame, which will hopefully help us to buy time to get our economic engine roaring.

Last but not least:



(Yes, ladies, he's single.)

Gilden Silveric, basically an archer with a little extra strength and the heroic promotion. He's not exactly a heavyweight, but he's one of the earliest heroes available (at archery). He's not going to win any wars for us by his lonesome, but he should have no problem keeping barbarians in line. If promoted up the drill line, he's a good stack defender.

[HidingKneel]

The GM enabling 100% research would possibly be even more efficient than the GS, depending on how long God King is on the table, which if I understand correctly, is often longer than normal for elves.

God-king will give a +50% bonus to incoming gold, but we'll surely be building an academy in the capital too, which will give +50% to incoming beakers. So the question isn't how long we'll be in god-king, but how long we'll be in god-king before we get our first sage. I'm guessing not that long, which makes me think that the decision of what to do with the shade should be made with the very early game in mind. Once we've got a decent number of expenses, gold is just as important as science. But early on, when we have minimal expenses and lots of cheap techs to pick up ASAP, I think you can make a much better case for the sage.

Right now I'm thinking "none of the above", though. If we get a decent amount of commerce near our start, we'll probably benefit most from an engineer. Especially since elven laziness means we'll need extra workers.

Theme... yes, we'll need a theme. I will ponder it.

[HidingKneel]

Alright. We need a plan to win this game. Let's have a look at our options:

Religious Victory: Against human players, this is just not going to happen. Somehow, I think my opponents would notice if I was inquisitioning/building temples in their cities.

Tower of Mastery: Disabled for this game.

Conquest/Domination: The default plan. With the tower victory disabled, I think there's a very high chance that someone's going to win a conquest or domination victory (or get sufficiently close to one that the other players concede). Maybe that could be us, though I wouldn't count on it. Between the worldspell, the incentive to spread treant-spawning ancient forests thoughout our empire, and synergy with the archery line, the Ljosalfar are pretty good on defense. On offense, we've got no real advantages. In fact, we're at a slight disadvantage, because we can't build siege units.

Cultural: Here's a peaceful victory condition that's actually achievable. And one that we would be reasonably good at: with the Guardians of Nature civic and ancient forests everywhere, the Ljosalfar can build some pretty gigantic cities. But we're definitely not as well-suited as the Kuriotates and their mega-cities that can work the third ring.

Time: The most thematic victory condition for the elves. Wait and watch, and be the last one standing after the nations of the younger races have crumbled to dust. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that the other players are going to oblige me on this one.

Altar of the Luonnatar: Sounds crazy, right? First of all, you have to spend the whole game generating great prophets, which is a pretty serious opportunity cost. Then, you need to get to the deep end of the religious and arcane lines: strength of will, righteousness, commune with nature. Once all that's in place, it takes thousands of hammers to build the altar itself.

But it's not all bad. Those great prophets aren't wasted: the different levels of the altar give nice bonuses, like free xp on disciple units built in the city (did I mention that we're spiritual and going to be building a ton of priests?) and bonuses to priest specialists (and, of course, running priest specialists nets you more great prophets). Commune with nature is a natural tech goal for us, unlocking druids and Yvain. I don't know if the game will actually last long enough to get even one of those late game techs in play, let alone all three. To pull it off, you definitely need a killer economy, and that's what the Ljosalfar are great at.

Has anyone managed to pull off an altar victory in a PBEM here?
If not, we can be the first. Or die trying.

[Commodore]

Has anyone managed to pull off an altar victory in a PBEM here?
If not, we can be the first. Or die trying.

PocketBeetle won via altar, but that was just because he chose it, at that point the world was his oyster.

I like the synergy of going deep into the religious tree for war and winning. Archery should probably be the initial beeline, though. Elven economies are monsters once they get going, it seems like it's staying alive to get there that's the MP problem. Don't be afraid to attack with them either, the best defense is offense.

[HidingKneel]

I like the synergy of going deep into the religious tree for war and winning.

Aiming at an altar victory doesn't take us far from our natural tech path, at least at first. The techs needed to build the first four layers are mysticism, philosophy, and priesthood, which we're definitely planning to pick up.
Building the altar itself is probably not the most efficient use of our GPP, but it's not terrible either: bonus xp on disciples can be useful for building a priest army, and also getting quick mages (via promoted savants).

Archery should probably be the initial beeline, though.

I'm thinking that archers aren't so attractive, even with our dextrous trait. Bronze warriors are just as good on offense and almost as good on defense, cheaper to produce, and don't need an archery range.

But Gilden should not be ignored. Of the heroes belonging to civs in game, three come super late-game (Herne, Teutorix, Magnadine), one in the late mid-game (Maros), and only two come reasonable early (Gilden, Rantine). Rantine's basically a normal axeman with the heroic promotion. So Gilden is probably the strongest unit that anyone can field in the early game. We should definitely find some way to work that to our advantage.

So I guess my question is, what kind of beeline towards archery do you have in mind? A few possibilities:

Arendel of the Doviello: Tech crafting -> mining -> archery while building warriors, having our scouts locate the nearest opponent. Build Gilden as soon as possible, and send him to war with a contingent of warriors, picking up some promotions en route. Seems possible we might even be able to take someone out this way, if they aren't prepared for us. At the very least we could choke/cripple one of our neighbors.

Pros: Probably not coming in last.
Cons: Coming in second to last.

Priority within reason: Start with the basic worker techs including mining, then chants/mysticism. Tech archery, build Gilden. What to do with him? He's probably the strongest unit around, but he's just one unit and can't do much by himself. At this point our opponents probably have bronze warriors. Possibly we could send him with an escort to do some choking/pillaging, but that sounds like an easy way to lose a hero. Alternatively, we could keep him at home to dissuade invaders.

Low Priority: Pick up basic worker techs, then chants, then
education and mysticism in some order, then hunting, then archery.

Pros: If "worker techs" includes mining, we get the double prereq bonus
towards archery (how much of a bonus is this, anyway? Is the discount enough to be worth thinking about?) This way we get our economy rolling early.

Cons: Gilden comes out too late to be of any use on offense. And if we're unlucky enough to be invaded, we'll really wish we had him sooner.

I think the first plan would be great if we had only one or two opponents, but against five of them it's terrible. Between the other two: well, I guess it depends on what we're up against. If we start next to Rhoanna, we'll definitely want some kind of early defense against a warcry invasion.
If we're next to Kandros, I'll be a lot less worried.

Thoughts?

[HidingKneel]

So, as a spiritual leader aiming for an altar victory, religion is going to be a big part of our gameplan. Thanks to the spiritual trait, we can switch religions without anarchy. This is something I plan to take advantage of in the mid-game. Which means we shouldn't pay too much attention to religious heroes, since they will abandon us after a swap. With that in mind:

The Diverse Faiths of the Peoples of Erebus

Runes of Kilmorph: "Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money." Pretty much every civ can benefit from a few temples of Kilmorph, and even more so from spreading Kilmorph if it's your state religion. Stonewardens can cast shield of faith, which is a nice little perk. But the tech tree in Fall from Heaven is full of nice little perks. We might pick up Kilmorph in the mid-late game, when it becomes a cheap tech and we've got hammers to spare. But it's definitely not going to be an early priority.

Octopus Overlords: This one is pretty situational. As a creative leader, we don't really need the bonus culture. But tsunami is extremely powerful. If we start near water, or have enemies who build their cities on the coast, we'll definitely want to build some cultists for both offense and defense. If we're landlocked, we can skip it.

Fellowship of Leaves: Definitely the most important religion for us. We'll want to spend as much time in Fellowship as possible, to grow our ancient forests. Fellowship priests can create new forests (which is one reason we'll want to pick up priesthood ASAP), and also make a pretty good army with the ability to produce permanent tiger summons. (Those tigers can also be settled in cities for extra happiness, provided that we build a carnival first. Since we can build carnivals for half price, we get four times the value for our hammers.)

Fellowship of leaves also enables the Guardian of Nature civic, which offers tremendous health and happiness bonuses to cities surrounded by forests. If we make it to the late game, we'll definitely want to settle in leaves (and maybe even build the heroes, which come pretty late game as well).

Ashen Veil: We'll definitely want to spend some time in this religion cranking out ritualists, who are a great source of collateral damage. Temples of the Veil also give science, making them worthwhile builds. If we get there first, we might even consider reseaching infernal pact and trying to build the grimoire, for quick access to some late-game tech.

The Order: Confessors have the handy ability to bless any unit in their stack, adding a one-point bonus to strength which wears off after combat (at which point they need to be blessed again). Building enough layers of the altar produces a similar effect: all units passing through the altar city get blessed. It doesn't offer as much flexibility as
having a confessor, since you can't bless the unit again while it's in the field. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Order and Ashen Veil are incompatible: we can't have them both in the same city. All in all, I think we're unlikely to go this route, and definitely won't prioritize it.

The Empyrean: The main reason to adopt the Empyrean is for its religious hero. Chalid Astrakein, available at the religious law tech, is probably the best unit in the game (not counting super-units like Auric Ascended and Messhaber of Dis), and a terrific source of collateral damage. But we'll be staying away from religious heroes (and would probably have a lot of competition to build Chalid anyway), making Empyrean less attractive. Radiant guards and rathas are handy, but vicars (i.e., the units which would actually benefit from the altar and our spiritual trait) are pretty much useless. We'll probably not go this road.

Council of Esus Esus doesn't have any priests, so there's no synergy with the altar or with our spiritual trait. It offers a nice religious hero (Gibbon Goetia) who is the quickest way to get level three spells. But we won't be building him, and the other Esus unique units (shadows and shadowriders) are available very late and far off of our preferred tech path. So we'll probably never adopt Esus.

Nevertheless, we might want to consider trying to found Esus. The main prereqs (horseback riding, writing, trade, way of the wicked) are things we're going to want anyway. If we're the first to the deception tech, we'll have a chance to build the Nox Noctis. It may be that the best defense is a good offense. But failing that, a pretty good defense is having all of your units invisible while within your own borders. Come to think of it, that's a pretty good offense as well.

So, in summary: we're primarily tree-huggers who indulge in a little devil-worship on the side. We might also visit the other evil religions. To build levels of the altar, we'll need a non-evil alignment, which we might achieve by a quick detour through Kilmorph (in the unlikely even that we make it to the late game, we'll also want to be neutral to build druids).