get started with FFH/EitB?

[Miguelito]

So I played my first game yesterday (not finished), and some questions to the vets:
- I think I saw people playing worker first openings in the PBEMs, yet when I tried that I would always get eaten by the barbs, sometimes before the wokrer finished, but certainly before the first warrior came out

What difficulty are you at? In the PBEMs we're often in the Noble or Monarch range. Also we rarely include lairs, which means just animals early. I'd expect more barbs at higher difficulty with lairs on.

- is it smart play to explore barrows/ruins/dungeons with the initial scouts? They seemed often not to survive it, and the bonuses you get are better on real units, otoh if I don't, more barbarians spawn close to my capital...

It depends. You certainly need more scouts than you would in BtS. A compromise is to camp on top of the barrow or ruin; that prevents spawns but offers no rewards.

On the other hand, sometimes exploring these gives you an awesome reward, like a Great Person on T5. Or a great risk, like spawning a barb who will certainly kill you. It's a gamble, really. I wouldn't say 'smart play' either way, more 'what sort of game do you prefer?'. In MP we usually turn them off because exploration results can matter more than player skill.

Played on Prince (that's the one below Monarch right?) for the start, though I think I'll start a new game on Monarch (I took the wrong map script and am alone with one other civ on an island - what map script do you guys use normally? I mainly want interaction with a lot of civs, but if there is some naval component that would be nice as well).

The barbs that killed me came out of lairs, yes. Camping the lairs till the first warrior is out could help

- why is cottaging in general unviable? With those elves and 3/1/1 base tiles (ancinet forests) it certainly is fun, but how do other civs generate commerce if not by working tiles?

Aristocracy/Agrarianism is usually better - it turns a grass farm into a 3/0/3 tile. Not as good in the long term, but it boosts the snowball so fast that you often don't see the long term. The other thing is that EitB games are usually shorter than BtS games.

That said, EitB cottages are sometimes viable. Especially if you're elves or Kuriotates, or in for a long game due to map settings. If you go that route, you'll want to head to Trade for the Foreign Trade civic instead.

Yep I already noticed that civs can go crazy... adopted the treehugger religion civ which gave my capital like +12 happiness instantly
How come the games are shorter? I had the impression that with the super expensive settlers it took like forever to get things rolling. But granted, after a while tile yields became really high, so that could accelerate things.


Thanks Mardoc and Q for the insights

[Aurorarcher]

Settlers are more expensive, that's true - but you'll notice that units in FFH/EitB can be really, really strong. Also it's easier to gain experience and promotions give more strenght (for example C1 is +20% strenght here compared to +10% in BtS).

[Mardoc]

Map scripts are mostly the same as BtS. Been a lot of Torusland maps lately in the PBEMs. Basically, your knowledge of what sort of map will give you what sort of game should transfer over prettty well.

Main reason games are shorter is that once you get to Tier 3 units (priests, mages, chariots, etc) offense becomes favored over defense, so whoever's ahead can start conquering.

[Bobchillingworth]

It also takes vastly less time for conquered land to become productive in FFH- including non-savant T2 priest units in your stacks will allow you to instantly end revolts as soon as you take cities, while unlocking their BFCs. FFH farms make regrowing population centers easy. There are also a number of crazy snowball options, such as using city capture and pillage gold to hire a constant stream of mercenary reinforcements, or adopting a civic which gives slaves after successful combats and then field-promoting them up the melee line as the Doviello.

[Miguelito]

Map scripts are mostly the same as BtS. Been a lot of Torusland maps lately in the PBEMs. Basically, your knowledge of what sort of map will give you what sort of game should transfer over prettty well.

noob question: where do I get Torusland and how do I incorporate it to EitB?

[Mardoc]

Download the script from here, install it like any other mapscript. In your BtS folder works, EitB looks there.

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...=torusland

[Kragroth]

Fyi. You have to manually edit a worldbuilder game file via notepad to get the map to show lairs and unique features.

[Qgqqqqq]

*To get the map to create lairs, unique features, and huts.

[Miguelito]

Uh... may I ask which file that would be and which edit? Is it lines of code I can add to / change in the map script, or do I need to do it for every map I want to play?

[Qgqqqqq]

You'd need to do it to every map you played.