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

[Xenoborg]

Also terrain doesn't covert until it has at least 10 hell points. Hell points go up by 1 per turn for each adjacent tile with any hell points even if they aren't converted yet. Infernal culture gives max hell points instantly.

[HidingKneel]

Interesting. Well, real estate values have been in the toilet since Hyborem arrived. The AC is running unchecked, which is posing problems for our alliance:



Also got a message from Ichabod this turn, saying he doesn't think he can do much against Ellimist's S9 axemen. Ya think?

Mass upgraded my disciples to rangers this turn. Next turn I'll position them and give them poisoned blades. Turn after that is the worldspell. I'll do a proper update on turn 140, and show you what a nice pretty empire I've built, before Ellimist smashes it all to pieces.

[HidingKneel]

Turn 139.

The good news is, Ellimist is finally no longer in his golden age.

The bad news is, the demographics look like this:



Well, we'll give it all we've got. I shot this message off to Ichabod:



Moved my army into position. They're sitting in a fort on a forest hill, and I'll use a nature I adept to make sure they're fully fortified. I wanted them in position this turn, so they can sit still next turn and have the potential to heal at the start of turn 141, in case Ellimist hits me with some collateral.

Here's what we've got in the green corner:



Actually, we've got a little bit more. More rangers on the move (I'm building them almost everywhere), another confessor and some adepts in the city to the south, and four druids parked on that peak. Got some scouts in the stack to soak up assassin hits, and a huge team of workers to build combat roads in case they're needed.

So, Commodore... looks like we're nearing the end of the line. Any sage advice for what to do with the army, while it still exists?

[HidingKneel]

Turn 140. The eve of the final battle has arrived.

Message from Ichabod:



Oh well. I doubt he would be able to take the Esus city with or without my help.

Converted to Ashen Veil, swapped into StW, and fired the worldspell. Here's the before:



After:



Or, put another way, here's a very misleading power graph:



A few turns back, I called Ellimist out on his hawks using the grimoire in my territory. I got this in response:



So I decided I would counter with a literary reference of my own:



(Looks like Mardoc beat me to this in the FFH XXIII banter thread. A lot of treants making the rounds, these days.)

Moving more than a hundred treants around makes for a long, boring turn.
It occurs to me now that engineering might have been worthwhile just to get more treants to the front lines (more roads would have helped with that, too).

So, this is it, pretty much. All downhill from here. Let's take one last look at the Ljosalfar empire before its downfall. First, our army. Part 1:



And part 2:



Tigers and balors are in Gon Gatha, treants are everywhere, druids are on a peak. Other than that, almost everything is on that square I showed last time. I gave a couple of weak units drill promotions, on the off chance that they might damage some attackers. But mostly I'm still saving the promotions; I don't think Ellimist will be in a position to attack much of that stack next turn, but he might hit it with collateral, in which case I want to be able to heal up.

Finally, a global overview:



We've got two more cities that aren't visible there, but they're irrelevant: size one cities that I just founded to grab a few more treants. Probably not worth it, actually... I don't think any of those treants will see action.

Building military pretty much everywhere except Evermore. Evermore's been building wonders for a while now. Probably not the best use of those hammers, but I'm not going to win this war anyway and I like finishing wonders. It's going to grow fast under StW, has no more tiles to work in the BFC, and has a national epic. I think I can get the first layer of the Altar built before the orcish horde arrives .

[Mardoc]

Hey, I'm impressed you caught the reference without the accent attached. Seemed appropriate, though.

(mainly posted so that Ellimist has a link for explanation after the game ends)

[Commodore]

Forgive my largely irrelevant presence. Sage advice? Sorry, none to offer really. TREE SMASH!

[HidingKneel]

Hey, I'm impressed you caught the reference without the accent attached. Seemed appropriate, though.

(mainly posted so that Ellimist has a link for explanation after the game ends)

I'm not sure I would have, if I hadn't been planning on making the same reference here. Great minds think alike :D.

Forgive my largely irrelevant presence. Sage advice? Sorry, none to offer really. TREE SMASH!

No worries. That's as good a plan as any. Elegant in its simplicity .

Turn 141 has come. Total anticlimax. First, Ichabod hasn't used his worldspell . Nox Noctis is still up. Ellimist has tons of death adepts, which he's used to conjure skeleton walls basically everywhere we have a border. Not nearly enough treants to punch through. I did take down a crew of about thirty skeletons with my main army. Free experience is always nice.
Didn't have enough firepower to attack Ellimist's city, though... he's got ogres in there defending at strength 46, even after being hit with collateral.
I fired off two crowns of brilliance, and had my ritualist-druids entangle, and cast blinding light with my four rathas. So I'm not too worried about a counterattack in the immediate future. Moved my huge stack into Gon Gatha, and cash-rushed a wall.

Four adepts got in on the skeleton-mashing game. Got some candidates for promotion to mage, so I turned science back on to tech sorcery. Life mages could be effective at taking down those skeletal hordes.

[HidingKneel]

We're probably calling the game, but I played another turn regardless.

PS: Putting units on peaks does not keep them safe!

That's a lesson I learned well enough in FFH XXI. But when Ellimist posted it here, I was worried that I misunderstood some basic mechanic, and he'd be able to attack my druids from his city. It's not nearly so bad as that:



Last turn I picked off some skeletons with my druids to get them some xp. I was attacking across a river, so they took some damage, and apparently one of them was bad off enough to succumb to a fireball. I think the other three will be okay, although Ellimist disabled them all for a turn with something (maybe blinding light?) Crown of brilliance still went off, though, so they're doing some good.

(Druid will be annoying to replace, since I'm now evil again, and if I swap out of Veil a lot of cities will starve. Can't do that for three turns anyhow. I'll just have to make do.)

So, what else? Tholal is a man of few words:



I assume that's to help him deal with the horsemen. Sure, no problem. I don't need the map, but I don't need the spirit mana either, and no harm in getting a little goodwill.

Also some diplomacy with Ichabod:



Yeah, this game is over.

As for me, I've just got the army in Gon Gatha. Putting it there was a mistake... Ellimist locked most of it down with blinding light (I think). Pretty much the same thing I'm doing with his army. But the stalemate won't last long. Two more turns and the treants disappear, at which point he can just attack me at any other border and wipe me out.

Well... actually, I do have another unit or two out there:



What's this? Looks like Ellimist's empire is too big to properly micromanage, or he'd have noticed a mobility II griffon next to his city last turn. This turn I declared nationality and razed it. Then, being a quick little bugger, I swooped in and razed another one:



Pushed the AC up again. Which I think is good for me at this point, since Ellimist's no longer got peace with the barbarians. Not that it matters; it's just nice to find some little victories where I can.

Not sure if the turn will make another circuit. If not, I'll wrap up next time with some final thoughts about the game.

[HidingKneel]

Alright, it's looking like we're calling the game, so I guess now's a good time for some post-game thoughts.

First, big thanks to Commodore for ded-lurking me in this game. It was my first MP game of FFH (actually my first MP strategy game of any type), and it was tremendously helpful to be able to get some input from someone who's been around the block a few times.

So, how'd we do? One might say we came in second place, in the end. But I think that's mostly a reflection of us toadying up to the Clan. That position was held by Yell0w early on, until he got elliminated (har!). Then it was the Hippus, until the Mercurians got sent home. Then it was Weezel with his strong economy, until Ellimist took him out. Meanwhile we were living (mostly) in peace, and even getting help from the Clan in building our cities.

The map was a mixed bag for us. On the one hand, it was huge, which is great for late blooming builder civs (we're late bloomers because it took us so long to get our priests out. Double har!) It was also well-forested, which was good for us economically and for the power of our worldspell. But it was also filled with peaks, which prevented us from building the kind of giant cities that make the elven economy so great. Was never even tempted to research hidden paths: our biggest city was Evermore, and its growth was capped by food, not happiness.

Of course, the other factor with the map was those forts with the double archers, which really dictated the whole shape of the game. I think if I was to do it again, I'd have joined Kyan in objecting. At the time it seemed like the consensus view was to play on, because we didn't want to have to repeat two weeks of the boring stages of the game. But considering that these games go on for months, it would probably have been worth it. This game would have been a lot more interesting if it had been more competitive.

In general, we finished the game much stronger than we started. Partly that's just how the Ljosalfar work. They don't get many early advantages (just double movement over forests, really), and lazy elven workers is a big handicap. Part of it was in the parameters of the game we decided on:
starting with a free worker changed the dynamics of the early game in ways I didn't consider. It really gave a leg up to civs that started with agriculture (Hippus, Kuriotates), who could start farming right away. We had exploration instead. Which might have been useful for getting a little extra early GNP, since we started with two cities. Except that I didn't know how trade connections worked at the beginning of the game, so I abandoned a road one turn from completion in order to get an early start on my first farm . So yeah, mostly our slow start can be blamed on me and my newbishness.

Of mistakes, there were many. Like not playing turn #1. That didn't seem like such a big deal at the time, but I can just offhand think of a couple of things I missed due to turn order (founding of AV, finishing the great library).

The next big mistake was founding that shade as a merchant. I'm pretty sure that Commodore was right, and the engineer was the way to go. A few extra warriors in the early stages of the game would have really helped with our barbarian troubles. An extra scout and I might have located another civ... as it was, I was isolated diplomatically for far too long.

Or maybe we should have started with a great sage. Tech was certainly sluggist in the early stages of the game. And I was way too slow in getting the elven economy set up. I probably should have grabbed education before crafting/mining. And of course that diversion to archery, when being faux-threatened by the Clan, was a huge disaster.

On relations with the Clan: well, early on, I think I made the right call. Ellimist was right when he said his early proposals benefitted us more than they benefitted him. We were super-backward at the time, and buying those settlers off him started making us competitive. The NAP I probably shouldn't have agreed to. Once we had the worldspell, he wasn't going to attack us anyway. But Ellimist had to worry about everyone. Giving him a safe border with his southern neighbor made it much easier to throw everything at his northern neighbor.

Of course, the biggest mistake of the game was deciding to fund Ellimist's war against Kyan . I'm not sure if Ellimist was really as worried about Kyan as he let on, but he was definitely downplaying his own (very strong) hand.

What would the game have looked like if the Mercurians hadn't been elliminated? (there I go again! Har!) Hard to say. But the Hippus economy wasn't exactly terrifying, even when their NAP with the Clan meant they didn't need to worry about military. With a modest amount of force (that he paid for himself), Ellimist probably could have kept them from unlocking the top-tier angels for a very long time. And this stage of the game might have looked a lot more interesting... Kyan/Ichabod with some angels, Ellimist with the malevolent design toys, Weezel with the Nox Noctis (and presumably he meant to build an army at some point). I think druids/elven economy would have been able to compete in a world like that.

In my defense, I was anticipating that there would actually be a war, and that Ellimist would have been investing hammers (for units) and gold (for upkeep) in it. When the Hippus folded without a fight... well, that was when the game was essentially over. Not that I blame them... I feel a little bad about how this went down, from Kyan's point of view. I mean, here's a game where one of the players is handed a huge advantage, right from the start. Thanks to his ability to spin straw into gold, Kyan almost manages to turn the tables on him... only to get slapped down by every other civ in the game, acting (for the most part) against their own self-interests . Yeah, we really misplayed that.

But even after the game was essentially decided, I still had more mistakes to make! The next was staying out of the Clan-Malakim war. My logic at the time was that I didn't think Weezel could stand up to him (which was right), and I wanted to wait until I had Ichabod on my side. It wasn't until later that I learned how long that NAP would last. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have cancelled my treaty with Ellimist much earlier. Even if I wasn't able to join the fight right away, knowing that he would need to defend a second border ought to have slowed him down. And the conquest ended up taking well over a dozen turns. At that stage of the game, priests of leaves were very relevant units. Just a few of them in a Malakim city could have conjured up a hell of a lot of tigers.

Finally, giving up Zholub to the infernals was a big mistake. It was obvious at the time that they weren't going to last long... I don't think they ever even had a unit in it. I guess I just wanted to make nice with the new guy, even if the new guy was a big red demon. On a similar note: if I wasn't going to help Weezel, I should have taken Owabi for myself. I just couldn't bring myself to kick a guy when he was down.

So, where does that leave us? We didn't win the game. The plan to build the Altar never really got anywhere... got exactly zero layers built over the course of the game. But I did get a chance to play with most of the cool elf-toys (including druids, who I never expected to make an appearance) before the end. It was my first PBEM and I had a lot of fun with it. Hopefully I've entertained some lurkers as well!

Cheers all!

[Merovech]