(January 30th, 2021, 01:13)Bobchillingworth Wrote: * Pyre of the Seraphic: Okay, this one is pretty nuts. Same as the Broken Sepulcher, except with Fire instead of Death Mana, AND you can sacrifice any non-summon Angel unit on it to do heavy fire damage to bordering tiles and gain a permanent Fire Elemental. Except Angels with the Heroic promotion, who grant like nine Fire Elementals instead (rarely worth it in their case, though). You're very fortunate if you're playing as Basium and have the Pyre still standing in your territory. The AI has no idea how to use this ability.
Not to hijack the thread, but this reminded me of something I'd been wondering in general. Do you think FFH2's AI stands up and makes the game worth playing solo, or is MP a more 'true' experience due to the complexity?
As per usual, Bob likely has a better response, but one of the major FFH modmods is called more naval AI, where they tried a lot to improve AI behaviour (not only on the seas). In the end the high mobility of your units and silly stuff like collateral spells affecting all units in a stack without limit still means that their immense stacks of doom are cannon fodder, but in one of the few SP games I played last year I got actually outmaneuvered nicely by a dwarf AI shortcutting me over hills. It will also still make inexplicable and dumb decisions, but mostly send balanced stacks at you, making use of magic.
EitB has not integrated more naval AI, which means that the AI is dumb as a rock. But there is Extramodmod, which forked from an earlier EitB and integrated MNAI, and I believe some other stuff? The developer has abandoned it, but some other guy picked it up, so you could call that Extramodmodmodmod at this point.
And feel free to hijack the thread for whatever purpose you want. The one war where I actually hope to perform competitively in this game is the post/view count.
Not entirely the case! EitB actually does incorporate MNAI, just an early version- the AI in EitB is noticeably better than in vanilla FFH (for one, it actually knows how to settle islands), but it's def. worse than the current incarnation of MNAI.
EMM is kind of a mess IMO due to taking a rather generous kitchen sink approach in incorporating features from other modmods, but some enjoy it.
hm, I ended up with EMM because I wanted to play something like EitB (with the idea to enter a PBEM when it came around), while having smarter AI. Playe donly one game to a semi-finish, but that was fun. Although it does have that extra column of mana which I feel doubtful about
Since the weekend blitz didn't materialize I made a sandbox, it's attached here, for if you want to try your hand.
First few results.
All these grow to size 4 after the first worker, then start the second one, then to size 5.
Settler at size 5 t39; 2 additional scouts/warriors. Mining->AH->Exploration. The worker on the gold sits idling for 2 turns waiting for exploration to finish, so that sucks. Exploration can go ahead of AH, in which case the northern worker mines the other hill. That can also speed a second city S of the gems up two turns, if the southern worker builds roads instead of mining the gold, on of them on the city square. One turn with just a road on the gold, then mining.
Settler at size 7 t42; 3 additional scouts/warriors. Going all in on the God King capital. Mining->Exploration->AH->AC->Myst. Worker micro could surely be improved upon
Am I building way too few scouts/warriors for the barbs? What is a usual eta for the first settler? Coming from base civ4 ~turn 40 on quick speed feels ludicrously slow, but of course that settler still costs 145h and can't be whipped.
Would something like settler at size 3 or 4, maybe before the second worker, make sense? I'll try to find out.
Mechanics question: The free beaker from civ 4 doesn't exist here, right?
Also in the process of setting up a micro spreadsheet, which in PB54 I found more satisfying than going back and forth through loading screens in the sandbox.
C&D (don't expect a lot): Everybody else settled on the first turn; 3 of our friendly competitors have a landlocked capital, one has 7 land squares. I'm hoping that nobody else got into a precious metal paradise of the sort that we have without having to hold off settling for a turn.
I'm second guessing a little if the PH 2W of the chosen cap would not have been better, just by virtue of being a plainshill. But then the precious metal would have to be worked by the second city, which would need to grow first... water under the bridge anyways.
Four Scouts is more than enough for the barbs, most likely; however, presumably one or two of them would be out actually scouting, and the rest hunting exp by killing barbs who get too close to your borders, just don't waste them by keeping most of them too close to home (that's Warrior duty).
Have you tried going Mining -> AC -> Myst, for a truly early GK? I'd be tempted to do this, but I also inevitably end up playing every game by ear and don't know if that would be suboptimal play.
Size 7 before your first Settler is too long a delay, I think. Also, may be worth producing an elder council as your first building in your first expansion, esp. if you do end up settling your starting spot, so that you can run a sage and eventually found an academy in your capital.
Telling that 4/5 of the players likely moved at the start. Whoever stayed in place is probably screwed, if the starts at all resemble each other.
I will have a look at your worldbuilder and spreadsheet.
My games went typically Worker -> 2-3 Warriors -> Start Settler Size 3 or 4 but that is coming a casual CIV IV player who barely wins game on Immortal :D
In the spreadsheet (I fixed the link so it is open to everybody) I manage the following:
2 workers at size 5 -> settler eot 37. gems mine + FPH mine + 2 farms + grass forest farm just finished, AH finished eot 36 (delaying the pasture 1 turn to finish the GF farm). I doubt that I could speed up the settler another turn (will try single worker, although why beeline mining if there are no worker turns available?)
I've looked up the past few games. This would be the latest second city in living memory. Usual dates for the settler are t28-32. Mind this is quick speed, so every turn counts more.
Otoh these games all had green valleys (like our start here ) with calendar resources, to make the calendar beeline a nobrainer. Also no immortal difficulty, so higher happy cap, which makes the pop explosion to 6 or 7 using agrifarms very appealing. And we moved the settler and are elves, who are expected to be a bit slower.
Still I feel like the plan has us falling behind too much. So, I did a sim with calendar. Grow to 5, straight settler without a second worker, finished eot 33. Farm wheat, FP, cow, and a grassland, then corn at second city. Mining and second worker eot 36.
Without calendar resources this feels like playing to our weaknesses, not our strengths. It delays the precious metals a bunch, and AH is far away. That adds the drawback that the second city has to be the starting PH, which is a low production food monster same as the agri capital, and also backlines (I found coast this turn to the east). No exploration yet means we can't grow over size 5 for some time to come, just pump workers.
Still, this has 22 excess food hammers per turn to the 16 of the mining start. Again, almost exclusively food, so can't build much but workers (who can start mining the FPH though) and settlers. And the mining start is not that much better regarding commerce, despite working the gems, because we're working forested tiles trading hammers for commerce.
My gut and base civ4 experience tell me not to discard the foodhammer advantage. But maybe in EitB I should value the commerce advantage higher, as well as the ability to settle for cows in the south? Dunno. Mining first and bathing in commerce is the thing I want to do here, while calendar and foodhammer might be what I should be doing.
To make everything worse, we have to decide this turn, to change to calendar and revolt before the wheat farm finishes. So, input appreciated. I'll hold it until tonight (6-7 hours from now).
I have tried a bit, what do you think of going 1 worker into settler into second city as a worker pump?
You would change AH for Calendar but still connect the gems first, the gold will still need two turns but your capital is working the oasis in the meantime
I'll compare 2 scenarios (they're the first 2 tabs in the spreadsheet):
beeline mining, 2 workers into settler at size 5. City 2 founded 2S1E t39
calendar, grow to 5 after worker -> settler. City 2 founded 3N3W t36
both generate 2 scouts/warriors by turn 24, after that only settlers/workers is the plan.
The following numbers are for eot 41.
Has 354 accumulated production (incl. converted to food), 579-6 = 573 acc. beakers. 5+1 pop (city 2 grows eot)
Has 390 acc hammers, 566-12 = 554 acc. beakers. 5+2 pop (city 2 grew eot 39)
I have not factored in TR and costs. 1. has no TR but only 2 costs with 2 cities, while 2. does have TR but costs 4 per turn. So for simplicity both scenarios cost 2 gpt after founding city 2.
So 2. has a clear advantage regarding foodhammers, resulting in the 3rd worker coming earlier despite building the settler before the second one. They are both surprisingly even regarding commerce BUT scneario 1 does not need the 154 calendar beakers and instead got something useful in AH.
empire wide output per turn, with food consumption discounted, is 7 / 15 / 26(-2)
The calendar variant has 2 workers on the gold hill that can proceed to road and then hook the gems, or mine the FPH. Next worker is due the turn after. During that phase, it has lots of food but few actual hammers and is hard to steer towards hammers, meaning that we are less flexible towards barbs / a rush. This is fixed once we get the FPH mines. Cities grow like a weed.
Variant 1 just finished the 3rd worker. It can get scouts/warriors produced way quicker. Growing cities is hard, As many of the "good" tiles are low on food, and the great food tiles are less great than with agri (up to the cow, which has more food when agrifarmed than pastured ). They share the wheat, which either city pretty much needs to grow fast. Road connection for the trade route finished t45.
A factor that is more difficult to quantiy: Variant 2 does not really care for AH, but besides economics we also want it for our scouts to catch animals. I think that is pretty important for us.
If going by variant 1, I still am considering to research AC-Myst-Calendar, then revolt into GK+Agri. There is also no good civic coming up anytime soon on that branch (foreign trade, but later. And we will not have many forested farms that soon).
naufragar, the desert S of the cap is very mean (because it slows down movement, making the gems quite difficult to reach.
(February 1st, 2021, 17:22)Kaiser Wrote: I have tried a bit, what do you think of going 1 worker into settler into second city as a worker pump?
You would change AH for Calendar but still connect the gems first, the gold will still need two turns but your capital is working the oasis in the meantime
crosspost. So you're saying Crafting-Mining-Calendar? Build the settler at size 5?
Well Calendar would come some time like t35, meaning the big early advantage is lost. But it would help with the issues of the cities being so difficult to grow.
Looking closer at the map, apart from our original start there is no really good agri land visible yet though. And also, I wanna catch all the pokémon animals! (Yes, I've read Bob's adventure from a few years ago)
) with calendar resources, to make the calendar beeline a nobrainer. Also no immortal difficulty, so higher happy cap, which makes the pop explosion to 6 or 7 using agrifarms very appealing. And we moved the settler and are elves, who are expected to be a bit slower.
). They share the wheat, which either city pretty much needs to grow fast. Road connection for the trade route finished t45.