For Fear of Little Men-Clan of Embers Spoiler Thread

[Selrahc]

In the far off magical academy of Cevedes there is a clock. A clock whose hands perpetually linger before twelve o'clock. When the midnight hour is struck, the world will end.


tick

In the warrens of Bradruk the Burning, it's hard to make a life. The creatures of the clan of embers are born into hard, depressing conditions. Anything you want, you must take. Anything you keep, you must defend. None have a harder lot of it than the goblins, kicked around by the larger tougher species of the Clan. With no representation amongst the upper leadership, the best a goblin can hope for is to be picked out as a scout and sent to explore the harsh wilderness.

Well for one goblin, that wasn't enough.

tock

War. Bloodshed. Rebellion.

tick

Six months later, the scattered remnants of the host of the "Goblin King" are reduced to prowling the wilderness, scavenging for food and stealing possessions from the feral orcs who own the wilderlands.

But soon. Soon he'll show them just what a goblin can do.
In the distance, a warg is howling. Fleas grins to himself. A good omen.

He'd build a new land. No orcs, save those few slaves they'd stolen. No lizards. None of those stinking foul brutish stupid ogres, like Gutbells.
This would be a true kingdom of the goblin. Then they'd have to respect him.

tock

If one were to look at the clock in Cevedes, one would be alarmed. This is the last day. The time is five minutes to midnight. And the hands are moving.
tick
tock
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[Selrahc]

Pregame-
1. Advanced Start Analysis
2. Opponent Analysis
3. Screenshotted Example Armageddon Rush Game

[Selrahc]

[SIZE="3"]1. Advanced Start: What do we do with all the gold?[/SIZE]

We.. we just keep it right? Look how shiny!

Advanced start seems to be a bit odd for Fall From Heaven. In regular BTS, I believe it's best to just load up on cheap BTS workers and settlers, and rely on the cheap and easy availability of worker techs to set you right. That was certainly the strategy that seemed prevalent in the only Advanced Start epic run on RB, and seems to be the general consensus on civfanatics.

FFH changes things up a bit however. Both settlers and workers take a price increase, and workers may be left jobless for many turns while you enable worker tech.

In an odd move, it looks to me like placing extra cities uses the BTS price scale. So it costs more to buy a settler than place a city. As an expansive civ, I'll be getting half price settlers making them a slightly cheaper deal than buying cities. Two of my opponents will also be able to take advantage of that... the Kuriotates and the Lanun. More on them later.

I played around with a few different strategies, but for the most part I think basically it's still the right play to prioritize workers and settlers. I'm going to be taking the starting city, a settler, two workers, two goblins and agriculture. Looking for sites with either good mining or calendar commerce sources.

Are there any unusual strategies that could be done? Well the Lanun and the Kuriotates both are going to be a little different. The Kurios can start the game with three settlers and a worker, settle their super cities and trigger legends. Off to a flying start. The Lanun can use the advanced start points to get them Fishing and Workboat, for some T1 coves, as well as having enough left over to buy a settler. Both those strategies scare me.

I briefly considered buying Crafting, Mining and a Warren. But sadly I'm a hundred gold short on being able to do that. Not sure if it would beat a straight out early second city+workers anyway.

[Selrahc]

[SIZE="3"]2. Opponents-These are the ones we watch burn[/SIZE]

As far as I see it there are three main methods to beat the apocalypse. Prevention, Fortification and Evasion.

Prevention would entail either pulling together a powerful early attack force, or rushing to build Prophecy of Ragnarok before I could. Now with the timelines involved, I can be reasonably certain to have Prophecy of Ragnarok built around T50. An early game attack striking before turn 50 is *fast*. I don't think any of the forces picked for the game are really built to do that. Beating the T50 build date is much more achievable. The Clan are really not a terribly good civ to build the wonder. They tech to it slowly and they don't have industrious to speed up the build. The trouble for either preventative measure however, is opportunity cost. To beat me down or beat me to the wonder, one has to sacrifice a lot of optimal pathing. Anybody who hasn't taken those steps will benefit equally to the victory, and so will probably beat you in the long run.

Fortification entails riding out the apocalypse, by being ready to fight the worst it can throw at you. The big mean Apocalyptic Horsemen are very scary, but there are a number of potential strategies that could cause them to take a nasty tumble. Delaying actions, like the Wall of Bone, can keep them tied up while other cities improve. Non-Living units, like the Illian Ice Elementals or the Ljosalfar Treants, can ignore a lot of the strength of horsemen, and attack them without fear for a comparatively easy win.

Evasion is the simplest of all. To evade the worst of the apocalypse, be a barbarian. To do that, either pick Charadon or tech to Hyborem.

I'll be rating each civ on a 5 point scale as to the strength of their Prevention, Fortification and Evasion capabilities.

[Selrahc]

Plako as... Perpentach of the Balseraphs
Prevention 3-4
With good war traits the Balseraphs can certainly mount a powerful early offensive war with the best of them. If they don't get good early war traits? They can get freaks for some powerful attackers who easily upgrade to swords. A concerted effort would be worrying.

Fortification 1-3
With good economic traits, the Balseraphs could tech to some decent fortifications just about in time. In particular, I'm pretty certain they could get a wall of bone up and running, which gives them a good chance of holding out against horsemen. Without a good economic setup, they'll find it hard to chew through enough techs to get things ready, and if they try for a too slow attack force they'll end up crushed by the Horsemen.

Evasion 2
With good economic traits, Perpentach could work quite well to push for an early Hyborem. The trouble is getting those traits.

Ilios as... Ethne of the Elohim
Prevention 3
The Elohim have a rather good incentive to push for early philosophy, since it pushes them closer to the vital priesthood and fanatacism path, so the attempt to nick Prophecy from the clan could work out for them on the way to that.

Fortification 3-4
The big thing that the Elohim have going for them is sanctuary. With good luck, the Elohim will get a big chunk of extra time to tech to a good set of defences. None of the Elohim unique units will be terribly good, but they've got spirit mana for an all important courage promo.

Evasion 1
Creative and Organized are pretty good traits for amassing a manageable large empire. I don't think they'll help a frenzied early game rush to the devil very much.

Hiding Kneel as... Cardith of the Kuriotates
Prevention-4
Tech to centaurs as fast as possible using the power of the Kurio economy. Use the incredible speed of the centaurs to rush the Clan. Could work.

Fortification-2
The all important Spirit mana helps things out a bit. Courage is a necessity for fighting horsemen. Nothing else the Kurios have is really all that handy. The Sheaim would have been much better, with easy wall of bone as well as Pyre Zombies.

Evasion-4
The Kurios will be helped out a lot by advanced start. And they already have a damn good early game economy. If the objective is to go for Hyborem as quickly as possible, I think it would be hard to pick a better civ.

Bobchillingworth as... [strike]Falamar[/strike]Orangebeard the Obstreperous of the Lanun
Prevention-2
Certainly got the tech power to beat me to Ragnarok. I doubt that is the gameplan however. No real forces that lend themselves to an early assault force.

Fortification-1
No useful units or mana. A sitting duck.

Evasion-4
Bob has already beaten my Armageddon gameplan once with the Lanun. My big hope for this time, is that he will be unable to pull a fast enough tech pace from the very scant amount of water that has been promised. Lanun fast Hyborem pushes are all about not using any tile that isn't water, so I'd honestly not be surprised to see Bob OCC this.

The biggest danger from Bob is that he has faced almost this exact plan before. He *knows* how tight a timeframe to Armageddon the world is on, in a way I expect most of the others to underestimate.

[Mist]

You provisional starting screenshot. I consider it done, but stuff might change pending third party lurker feedback, if noone raises any objections, we'll go live in 24 hours.

[Selrahc]

Wow. That is almost ludicrously fecund.

[Selrahc]

Mists map was weird, and stymied my previous tech plans by making calendar almost worthless, and mining not much better.

So I've gone for something weird. AC 100 is currently forecasted for T60.

[Ichabod]

Mists map was weird, and stymied my previous tech plans by making calendar almost worthless, and mining not much better.

So I've gone for something weird. AC 100 is currently forecasted for T60.

If it isn't much trouble or much surprise spoiling, could you tell us what is your tech plan to achieve this?

[Selrahc]

I'll get the screenshots up later, but here is the gist.

There are two techs needed to bring the apocalypse. Masonry and Philosophy. Absolutely everything else is superfluous. With advanced start, I have taken Ancient Chants and Mysticism. I then bought a Pagan Temple(half cost for spiritual) and an additional population point. With Spiritual, I made a shift into God King and Pacifism. A Great Prophet will be spawned in 17turns, who will lightbulb Philosophy.

While this is happening, I'll tech the 260 beakers for Crafting and Masonry, as well as frittering away 80 beakers on agriculture. After that, tech is disabled forever to account for the costs of infinite goblins. Building the Prophecy will be the biggest timesink, taking around 22 turns, after which a warren will be slaved in immediately. The Warren/Prophecy capital *should* be set up by T40, after which 20 turns of Prophecy Mark Goblins will seal the deal. Somebody teching into Ashen Veil or Octopus Overlords will speed up the end of days by a turn or two, and the actions of the Horsemen could also be a swing factor.

If somebody attacks me, I'm probably doomed. I've got very little redundancy built into this system. My big hope is that I'll be doing things so fast that they won't even get a chance.