Mr. Cairo's Memory of Trees [spoilers]

[Mr. Cairo]

I've decided, in honour of my new elven brethren, to return to my first ever game here at RB for my naming scheme: Enya

So, on to the game. I am Arendel Phaedra of the Ljosalfar.

Arendel is SPI/CRE. The only real difference in FFH2 to vanilla (other than different building bonuses) is that SPI gives me bonuses for Disciple units. So I will definitely be going after a religion (more on that below). Other than that, Spiritual and Creative is still just as nice and EitB has even more civics to swap in and out of and more difficult to get early culture, so I think they are better traits here than in BTS/RBMod.

The other Ljosalfar leaders available were Amelanchier, who has a terrible combo of Raiders/Philosophical (raiders can be very good, but not paired with PHI imo) and Thessa, who's Expansive/Arcane. Actually quite a nice combo, I don't remember why I picked Arendel over her. Oh well.

Ljosalfar
The good elves of Erebus. They start with Exploration, and their palace has Nature, Air, and Life mana. Their civ trait gives an attack bonus to Archery units, which isn't nearly as good as the bonus to Recon units the bad elves get, but still might come in handy if the game lasts long enough and I can actually get somewhere in the tech tree this time.

Their World Spell is March of the Trees and requires Way of the Forests, which means FoL is a requirement for these guys. The spell spawns a Treant, a Strength 10 Woodsman 2 Elemental unit, in every forest and ancient forest within your borders. Those forests then turn into new forests and require time to grow back to usefulness. These Treants last 5 turns (less on quick? I'll have to test it). So useful for a desperate defense or a well timed first strike.

Finally, as Elves, the Ljosalfar get the same elven effects their evil cousins get. That means units with the Elven race-trait get double movement on forests, extra attack in forests, and reduced worker speed. They can also build improvements on forests without removing them.

That last bit basically means, as I said earlier, the FoL religion is mandatory. Since there'll be forests everywhere (and it's best to not improve non-forested tiles to let forests grow on them) it's fantastic for them to turn into ancient forests. It also means that Aristo/Agrarian farms are a no-go (unless you avoid farming any forests), which means you can avoid teching Calender for a while.

In fact, my plan for this game is to start with Agriculture as normal, but then beeline Education for Cottages, then go for FoL, before Calender, before Animal Husbandry, before Crafting, before anything else. I'll get hammers from forests and commerce from cottages, plus an early God-King for my cap. I'll also need to build many more workers than normal, since they're naturally slow, and building stuff on forests takes longer than on clear land.

I picked them because they're different, and require a different playstyle than my previous civs. My second choice was the Grigori, and after than I can't remember.

Oh right, UUs. They have a unique Xbow and HA, so I'll discuss them if I ever build any. They can't build Siege Workshops or any of the units that require one.

[Mr. Cairo]

The enemy:
Auro is Tebryn of the Sheim. I know all about them, and Auro is a lot better than me, so I'll be scared if I start next to him. He can actually execute a PZ rush on a neighbor if he wants to, which he probably wont, which means he'll get to Witches that much earlier, which makes sense as he picked the Arcane/Summoner leader. All told

Dave is Kandros of the Khazad, the non-mechanical Dwarves. They get all sorts of unique units and unique Forge, but their main thing is they get extra happiness and poductivity with more money in their vault. When their vaults are empty they suffer from the opposite. I don't actually know how to manage that in a MP game, it seems like it would be a real pain to do, but if done properly quite a boon. They're not really a rush civ, but the leader is Aggressive, and get's half price upgrades so Warrior spam into mass Axe upgrade is a possibility. Let's hope if I do start next to Dave he isn't holding a grudge from last game.

Jim is Cassiel of the Grigori. They get these special Great People called Adventurers that can upgrade for free to different units and are heros (which mean they accumulate xp one a turn until they hit 100). In exchange they can't pick a state religion. These were my initial first pick, but I decided that deciding what to do with the Adventurers would be too much of a pain, and I'd likely get it wrong, and lose because of it. I tried looking up old games here on RB, but the ones with the Grigori all seemed to have weird setting and were sparsely reported/died really early. So no help there. In the end I decided to go with the elves. Hopefully I can learn something from superjm this game about how to best use the Adventurers.

Mack is Sandalphon of the Sidar. I guess mack had such a fun time fighting the Sidar last game he decided to be them this game. They are terrifying in the hands of a competent player, an mack is the epitome of competent in Civ. Even down to a few cities, Auro was able to hold off Mack for ages and threaten deep into his territory with his Ghosts and Divided Souls. He'll probably win again, but it would be cool to see rematch between mack and Auro again, one that might actually let one of the rest of us get a shot at winning.

[Mr. Cairo]

I realised I forgot about my Hero, Gilden Silveric. He's actually relevant since he's one of the earliest around, available at Archery. He's 5/6, which becomes a regular strength 6 with the Ljosafar trait (which manifests itself with a promo called Dexterous which gives +1 attack). He's really good on the defensive, with bonuses to city and hill defense, and can damage units attacking his stack. But his high strength at that point in the game can lead to some possible offensive shenanigans. But more likely I'll go for Archery relatively early and grab him to remain safe. But if someone forgets to chop their forests down and lets me run a stack of Archers with this guy into their territory, I wont hesitate.

[Mr. Cairo]

Good start, but not what I wanted to see:


Not a lot of forests and a whole bunch of Calendar resources nearby. Also, all the food is AH or Calendar. Basically I'm forced into teching Calendar after Agriculture. Which is annoying. I think I will have to go for FoL before Education. I want to grab it asap. I'll then want to rush towards Priesthood to so I can upgrade my to Priests of Leaves and start Blooming everywhere.

Also, of note, you can turn jungles into forests by burning them down. When you cast blaze in a forest or jungle the progression is this:
Smoke->Fire->Forest/Jungle replaced with 'Burned Forest'->Becomes 'New Forest'->Becomes a normal Forest. It's a pretty long process and requires fire mana, but there it is. Maybe Auro will get an ealy Adept and go and burn all the jungles down.

[Mr. Cairo]

First encounter to my west is with superjm. So, basically the best out of the possible options, being least likely to rush. Not that that seems to be a possibility here, I appear to be surrounded by jungle on all sides, presumably so too is everyone else, which will slow down expansion and conflict. Which is a good thing in my books.

[Mr. Cairo]

Good news and possible terrible news this turn.

First, the good news:

Got the refugees event which means a free pop.

Bad news is superjm's scout is just outside my cap. Is it likely he'll try and end my game prematurely? Probably not, but me having the extra pop makes it more likely, since it means he'd get to keep my cap if he takes it. So I arranged my two pops such that if necessary I can finish a Warrior next turn, even if he moves onto the forest plains hill.



Also, if he does do that, well, my scouts are going to be running through the forest towards his cap (wherever it is) as fast as possible to ruin his game.

[Mr. Cairo]

He didn't threaten anything.

Good thing too, as my scout found his cap and I could have walked into it before his warrior got back (I'm pretty sure he can't have another warrior in there, everyone went worker first after all).

[Mr. Cairo]

Found mack. Came from superjm's direction though so hopefully if he goes off looking for me it'll be a while. Of course, now that I've said this his first scout is going to stumble on my borders next turn.

[Mr. Cairo]

and he killed my scout. I accepted his peace offer, but I'll allow Gowron to explain my true feelings:
https://youtu.be/UM1VHvpdsco?t=88

[Mr. Cairo]

Just putting this here for making my sim, so I can look at it with my phone.



Also, figured out the map script. Well, figured out is too strong a word. I generated a map for my sim and decided to use the Rainforest script because there's lots of jungle in this map (and I didn't want to generate a map with any ocean I would have to fill in).
It turns out that script generates lots of jungle with jungle-less holes in it around each start plus some desert/floodplains areas. Like this map appears to have. Which is cool, I don't think I've ever used that script before. Also, unless Bob changed it, I can surmise that near that deserty bit by mack is a large mountain range, since that appears to be what the script generates. I might run the script a few more times to see what it likes to make.