Averax's Armada

[Kragroth]

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[Kragroth]

Old Stuff in Spoilers

Tasunke was my first choice. Hippus are naturally geared well to a Pangea map. I assume the picks were randomly rolled and I lost that one which is fine.

Ethne was my second choice and I'm glad to have her. Elohim are one of my favorite civs. Their naturally defensive nature appeals to me and the options available to you with the 30 turns of peace are quite nice. There's a few tactics I haven't seen used in a game before (I could have missed them).

The other civs are mostly harmless in he beginning (At lest in terms of free promotions). The hippus are concerning and if we're lucky, we will avoid them.

Ethne vs Einion: I almost always have used Eionion but seeing high level games have made me question the convenience of Philosophical. With Ethne I plan to expand quicky and help defend my cities better via creative trait reducing barb spawns.

I could even try for a cultural victory longterm. 50k culture is very possible if you plan for it. Or simple Conquest; we'll see. The arcane path is a desireable path for us because of Omniscience ritual allowing us to regain our worldspell.

Unfortunately we are mobility challenged. We probably need both horseback riding and body mana to be competitive. To get mages quickly we probably need to convert savants but that means we need 10 xp which means Education a command post and 3 altar levels.

Any way we go about this, it'll be very tech intensive to start the win ball rolling unless we start close enough to an opponent to bludgeon them to death with slow movers.

Alright, We're Averax the Cambion. We're awesome! Averax is in many ways what the Sheiam should always have been: Incentivized to start the apocalypse. In other FFH mods, the Shieam were made friendly with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but that's not so here. But, with this leader, we actually can summon the horsemen and not kick ourselves in the pants when it backfires.

Averax also solves another problem in that the Sheiam's greatest unit is the Pyre Zombie. It's not documented well, but basically by sacrificing enough Pyre Zombies, you can whittle down the defenses of any group of units regardless of strength. Ideally though, you don't sacrifice Pyre Zombies. You want your stack of Pyre Zombies is already inherently awesome and powerful kill stuff easily anyway. Neither Os Gabella nor Tebryn help Pyre Zombies: Their first line of defense and attack at being better. Averax's Aggressive trait helps a lot.

Not to mention the fact that Expansive and Barbarian go well together. Averax like Jonas Endain should be able to leverage the fact that having the Barbarian trait can pay dividends by not having to be bothered with the Orcs, Goblins, and Lizardmen running around.

[Mardoc]

There's a few tactics I haven't seen used in a game before (I could have missed them).

Oooh, tell me more. I've only seen it used two ways: to run absolute farmer's gambit, and only build military after someone makes you use it; and in an aggressive war, don't bother with garrisons, use Thanes to pop borders of conquered cities, and generally exploit your ability to put an army in a threatening spot but immune to counterattack. You don't need as much mobility if your opponent can't use his.

The Elohim generally come in 2nd or 3rd, and I can't figure out why. Their uniques seem good enough to be a top tier civ. It might just be luck/player skill, they haven't been in that many games so far.

I could even try for a cultural victory longterm. 50k culture is very possible if you plan for it.

It would be interesting to watch. Normally the bane of a culture attempt is getting dogpiled once it becomes clear you're going that way, and Sanctuary obviously helps a lot there.

Unfortunately we are mobility challenged. We probably need both horseback riding and body mana to be competitive. To get mages quickly we probably need to convert savants but that means we need 10 xp which means Education a command post and 3 altar levels.

You should test how Favored works with Savants and Savant-mages. I think you might not need altar levels to get 10 xp in reasonable time with Favored, but I'm not sure.

[Qgqqqqq]

Favored as a promotion doesn't carry through from Savants to mages. Which doesn't really matter here, as Kragroth isn't SPI

I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure the duration of Sanctuary got decreased in an early version of EitB. I recommend you check.

[Kragroth]

Favored as a promotion doesn't carry through from Savants to mages. Which doesn't really matter here, as Kragroth isn't SPI

I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure the duration of Sanctuary got decreased in an early version of EitB. I recommend you check.

Yeah.....the game pop says 30 turns. I just checked and it's 15 including the turn you used it: Meaning you only get full use of the turn if you are 1st in the order.

What a rip off. This drastically reduces my desire to play as Elohim. Out of all the things to nerf, this.

[Qgqqqqq]

Kragroth, do you want to change your picks? I'm prepared to allow that, given everything.


And a reminder that I haven't made all of the mod changes. If you want some of my or Sareln's changes reversed, there is a thread for that.

[Qgqqqqq]

Actually I'll revise that - I can't, in good conscience, let you choose completely now you've seen others picks. I'll let you take your third choice if you want, though.

[Kragroth]

As much as it's painful, 14-15 turns for Sanctuary isn't really long enough to get a big enough bang for the buck compared to other worldspells. Yes, I'll take my third choice.

[Kragroth]

Averax Advantages:

1. Pyre Zombie Synergy: Aggressive Trait
2. Armageddon Counter Synergy: Barbarian Trait, Worldbreak Spell
3. Early Expansion Synergy: Barbarian Trait, Expansive Trait

Averax Disadvantages:

1. Pyre Zombies are slow and cannot be hasted
2. Pyre zombies don't provide Military Happiness
3. Expansive Trait Benefit highly terrain dependent

Strategy:

Long term like every other civlization, the Sheiam need to be pumping out military units for victories. The question of course becomes, what military units should be emphasized and how much.

Well, Worldbreak spell has the potential to win fights. Have a high armageddon counter and simply cast it and then use your existing army in range and decimate the enemy. We're not Hippus, but this is as close to being Hippus as we're going to get.

Unfortunately, we're still more tech intensive than our Hippus counterparts. Horseback Riding is a must probably in order to get some semblance of mobility for ourselves. EITB has heavily nerfed the Ashen Veil. I don't like going for this religion in the mod. It costs 1658 just to acquire the Tech. Compare this to 442 for Runes and 707 for its supplemental tech or 1193 just for Orders from Heaven. We're paying almost 450 extra beakers for the privilege of getting just the Ashen Veil which is equivalent to a lot of juicy techs (Writing, Code of Laws, Warfare.

If we can find Horses, I think an Order based Shieam would be a good path. Assuming a decent start we probably want code of laws for the commerce. Code of laws is a prereq for Order as is Philosophy. Philosophy let's us build Prophecy of Ragnarok which we will use to raise the AC counter in order to harass our enemies and Aid our World Break Spell. I'd propose building lots of Horsemen from the Prophecy of Ragnarok City. After Philosophy, we'd head for Orders from Heaven. We'd Adopt Social Order and start building Valin.

We go for Warfare followed by Military Strategy. Valin being a hero would enable us to Qualify for the Heroic Epic if we didn't already have a unit that's promoted enough. Next we'd get Priesthood and then later Stirrups to get both Horse Archers and Royal Guards.

We could potentially avoid Bronze Working. I despise that tech. We'll see. We'll probably have to get it.

If we get large enough we could consider diverting to Ashen Veil to add to the AC Count.

[Qgqqqqq]

How has Ashen Veil been nerfed?

Why do you despise Bronze Working?