re: title - I'm sure that joke has been done a thousand times in other Illian threads already, but I wasn't around then, so I feel like I'm allowed to.
Alarming reports from the misgoverned Grigori state.
Desertification is running rampant, and the drylands are already encroaching on ancestral tundra and glacier lands, disrupting ecosystems, threatening the habitat of the great bison herdes and ultimately putting in peril the climatic balance of all of Erebus.
Special climate envoy Rurios: "The time has passed for soft measures, or local action. And the dwarves will never give up their forges voluntarily anyway. We are establishing a model project of immediate climate cooling in Grigoria, and if successful will apply all available leverage to apply this on a global scale."
In this adventure we are taking over a failed state that was left in the hands of the AI for 200 turns. They happened to be Grigori, which is one of 2 agnostic civs. Consequently the tech tree had nothing in terms of religion, but is somewhat advanced on the magic line. The logical choice would then be to pick an arcane leader of some magic leaning civ and go rampant with that.
Instead I opted to keep emphasizing the agnostic part, but with a twist. The other agnostic civ are the Illians. Their main leader (the only one in the base game, and afaik EitB as well) is Auric Uilvin, who would be an excellent choice for this start (Arcane/Charismatic, he has little going for him early, but has one of the best combos to get a lot of strong mages). However, ExtraModMod introduces a bunch of more fringe leaders, and I went for this gentleman:
The spiritual/agnostic combo just fascinated me.
Spiritual has everything that it has in vanilla (which I love), but in addition also gives way stronger disciple units, with a free mobility promotion and increased passive XP gain. The catch is that with agnostic, I'll only ever be able to build 3 disciple units (the Priests of Winter), which can't be recovered either should they ever die.
Here's how that works: The Illians don't actually reject religion (like the Grigori do), so they are false agnostics who just are fully set on one god from the start on. That god happens to be Mulcarn, the god of winter, whom you killed if you ever played through the FFH scenario that was shipped with BTS (I found it incredibly tedious and never got anywhere despite several attempts). So the unique feature of the Illians gmae is that you can play to resurrect Mulcarn, and become his avatar. Obviously what I'm going to do here. It involves building a succession of unique rituals (equivalent to BTS projects), and one of the first of those gives you the three priests, which arguably are stronger, and come earlier (rather irrelevant here), than normal priests, but as I said they are only 3 and must never die. I hope lots of passive XP help with that. With the late game tech of Theology they can be upgraded to high priests, who have at their disposal what probably is the most powerful spell in the game.
ExtraModMod watered that down, sadly, because it made ice mana available to everyone, and so any civ can get that spell on archmages. But I can just ignore that of course.
While I can't build the temples of the various religions (and change between them, which is normally the fascinating part of the FFH Spi game), the Illians get a unique pagan temple for their god, the Temple of the Hand, which has the interesting ability of converting all land in a 2 tile radius to snow. Have you seen those deserts? The Illians can take care of that. And I get them with +100% hammers, which surely is helpful on completely unproductive desert plants. As you see, snow is basically grassland for Illians while making their cities useless for possible conquerors, and it also gives their units a combat bonus. Improvements on snow cost +50% though, but I hope that that doesn't hit as hard in this game as in a game where you start from 0.
Finally spiritual has still the no anarchy effect, so let's have a look what that can be good for:
So the first thing is that agnostic again locks us out of a bunch of stuff. We can't use Theocracy, Sacrifice the Weak, Social Order, Arete, Guardian of Nature, and on the Membership column only Undercouncil (we're evil like any single Illian leader, and can't help it because that is done by converting to a neutral or good religion). Religion gives us a happy face for cities with a Temple of the Hand, but that's it.
The ability is also a bit weaker than in vanilla because the revolt cycle takes 8 turns instead of 5.
Let's see what's left in the various columns:
Financial is unspectacular. +25% gold, 2 fast buildings. Certainly helpful.
The Illians have a very powerful world spell, which gives them a golden age for 10 turns while disabling everybody elses build queues and commerce (yes). I'm not sure how to use it here. The classical approach is an early rush, but that doesn't apply here. Probably still for the first conquest. We may get to use it twice, since the ritual to recharge it is on the same, never researched tech where the final Ascension ritual is.
The civ hero is a very large frost giant. I'm not sure what's special about him, he hits only a bit harder than a champion, who is on the same tech. Of course I'll still build him, it's a giant after all. I could also heeds mack's lesson and get him killed to build him a shrine, but for SP that feels lame.
Variant Rule: No damage spells and no summons outside of the Ice mana line. Utility spells are fair game. If things look bleak I would allow maelstrom to be used, if I think I can't do without magic collateral before high priests / archmages.
The rough tech/game plan is philosophy for the priests -> Sorcery and/or IW -> priesthood/religious law/theology/(+rage, because when is that ever used)-> arcane lore/strength of will->Omniscience.
Economic stuff (hunting, (poisons), sanitation, currency->taxation, mathematics->engineering, not necessarily in that order) sprinkled in, but as early as possible because I'm playing a long game here.
Deviations for more military techs (horses, bows, (machinery), blasting powder) and naval stuff to be considered situationally. Tower of Divination probably for Strength of Will. It's only a bit cheaper than Omniscience but has only one prereq bonus, and comes earlier. Or maybe Divine Essence or even Theology if things don't look good.
Sounds like Domination. I fear I will not get a third star in that case, but that should not matter anyways.
I will try to update the thread while playing, as I've found I never report if I have to write up the whole game after the fact (that happened in FFH Adventure 7, where my screenies of glorious conquests are still rotting)
Alarming reports from the misgoverned Grigori state.
Desertification is running rampant, and the drylands are already encroaching on ancestral tundra and glacier lands, disrupting ecosystems, threatening the habitat of the great bison herdes and ultimately putting in peril the climatic balance of all of Erebus.
Special climate envoy Rurios: "The time has passed for soft measures, or local action. And the dwarves will never give up their forges voluntarily anyway. We are establishing a model project of immediate climate cooling in Grigoria, and if successful will apply all available leverage to apply this on a global scale."
In this adventure we are taking over a failed state that was left in the hands of the AI for 200 turns. They happened to be Grigori, which is one of 2 agnostic civs. Consequently the tech tree had nothing in terms of religion, but is somewhat advanced on the magic line. The logical choice would then be to pick an arcane leader of some magic leaning civ and go rampant with that.
Instead I opted to keep emphasizing the agnostic part, but with a twist. The other agnostic civ are the Illians. Their main leader (the only one in the base game, and afaik EitB as well) is Auric Uilvin, who would be an excellent choice for this start (Arcane/Charismatic, he has little going for him early, but has one of the best combos to get a lot of strong mages). However, ExtraModMod introduces a bunch of more fringe leaders, and I went for this gentleman:
The spiritual/agnostic combo just fascinated me.
Spiritual has everything that it has in vanilla (which I love), but in addition also gives way stronger disciple units, with a free mobility promotion and increased passive XP gain. The catch is that with agnostic, I'll only ever be able to build 3 disciple units (the Priests of Winter), which can't be recovered either should they ever die.
Here's how that works: The Illians don't actually reject religion (like the Grigori do), so they are false agnostics who just are fully set on one god from the start on. That god happens to be Mulcarn, the god of winter, whom you killed if you ever played through the FFH scenario that was shipped with BTS (I found it incredibly tedious and never got anywhere despite several attempts). So the unique feature of the Illians gmae is that you can play to resurrect Mulcarn, and become his avatar. Obviously what I'm going to do here. It involves building a succession of unique rituals (equivalent to BTS projects), and one of the first of those gives you the three priests, which arguably are stronger, and come earlier (rather irrelevant here), than normal priests, but as I said they are only 3 and must never die. I hope lots of passive XP help with that. With the late game tech of Theology they can be upgraded to high priests, who have at their disposal what probably is the most powerful spell in the game.
ExtraModMod watered that down, sadly, because it made ice mana available to everyone, and so any civ can get that spell on archmages. But I can just ignore that of course.
While I can't build the temples of the various religions (and change between them, which is normally the fascinating part of the FFH Spi game), the Illians get a unique pagan temple for their god, the Temple of the Hand, which has the interesting ability of converting all land in a 2 tile radius to snow. Have you seen those deserts? The Illians can take care of that. And I get them with +100% hammers, which surely is helpful on completely unproductive desert plants. As you see, snow is basically grassland for Illians while making their cities useless for possible conquerors, and it also gives their units a combat bonus. Improvements on snow cost +50% though, but I hope that that doesn't hit as hard in this game as in a game where you start from 0.
Finally spiritual has still the no anarchy effect, so let's have a look what that can be good for:
So the first thing is that agnostic again locks us out of a bunch of stuff. We can't use Theocracy, Sacrifice the Weak, Social Order, Arete, Guardian of Nature, and on the Membership column only Undercouncil (we're evil like any single Illian leader, and can't help it because that is done by converting to a neutral or good religion). Religion gives us a happy face for cities with a Temple of the Hand, but that's it.
The ability is also a bit weaker than in vanilla because the revolt cycle takes 8 turns instead of 5.
Let's see what's left in the various columns:
- I'll probably want to start with God King if I'm not there already. I can see some switches between that and city states (save gold in GK, research in CS?). Aristocracy doesn't seem interesting. For the late rituals I have to research some very expensive techs, and I'll need a well matured cottage economy for that. Which also means that from some point on I'll just stay in Republic.
- I can see a lot of cycling here. Pacifism has just +50% GPP, but has still a very situational use. Nationhood is default, in particular as it offsets Apprenticeship's unit production malus. Later maybe cycle between scholarship and consumption. Liberty seems like a culture victory civic, which I don't care for here, but it might be useful if we have to go into a culture battle (well actual battles seem preferable). It is also on a dead end tech.
- Again a lot of cycling potential. The default is probably Apprenticeship, but I expect to use Slavery periodically. Military state - generally I'd favour Apprenticeship's XP over mass production, but there will likely be times where that is preferable. Guilds is actually like CS in vanilla, but with unlimited engineer slots on top
and further goodies, it comes very late though. Guilds is a dead end tech, which however also gives a trade route, a workshop hammer, and an internet like wonder, so maybe worthwhile. Caste System makes workers faster, which might be relevant when they have to wade through the snow.
- I expect to spend a lot of time in foreign trade, which gives faster cottage growth. mackoti recently demonstrated the power of conquest in EitB 54, but I'll likely still pass most of the time. Mercantilism is on the same dead end tech as Liberty, and is geared towards a specialist economy which I don't think I'll ever care for. Urban Planning gives +1 food for towns and villages on top of other goodies so I think that's set for the end game.
- Only has undercouncil when/if I research poisons.
Financial is unspectacular. +25% gold, 2 fast buildings. Certainly helpful.
The Illians have a very powerful world spell, which gives them a golden age for 10 turns while disabling everybody elses build queues and commerce (yes). I'm not sure how to use it here. The classical approach is an early rush, but that doesn't apply here. Probably still for the first conquest. We may get to use it twice, since the ritual to recharge it is on the same, never researched tech where the final Ascension ritual is.
The civ hero is a very large frost giant. I'm not sure what's special about him, he hits only a bit harder than a champion, who is on the same tech. Of course I'll still build him, it's a giant after all. I could also heeds mack's lesson and get him killed to build him a shrine, but for SP that feels lame.
Variant Rule: No damage spells and no summons outside of the Ice mana line. Utility spells are fair game. If things look bleak I would allow maelstrom to be used, if I think I can't do without magic collateral before high priests / archmages.
The rough tech/game plan is philosophy for the priests -> Sorcery and/or IW -> priesthood/religious law/theology/(+rage, because when is that ever used)-> arcane lore/strength of will->Omniscience.
Economic stuff (hunting, (poisons), sanitation, currency->taxation, mathematics->engineering, not necessarily in that order) sprinkled in, but as early as possible because I'm playing a long game here.
Deviations for more military techs (horses, bows, (machinery), blasting powder) and naval stuff to be considered situationally. Tower of Divination probably for Strength of Will. It's only a bit cheaper than Omniscience but has only one prereq bonus, and comes earlier. Or maybe Divine Essence or even Theology if things don't look good.
Sounds like Domination. I fear I will not get a third star in that case, but that should not matter anyways.
I will try to update the thread while playing, as I've found I never report if I have to write up the whole game after the fact (that happened in FFH Adventure 7, where my screenies of glorious conquests are still rotting)
). I wrote that I want to cycle with slavery, and this should help a lot. Tier 2 lets you switch grain or pasture resources, so you can transform one of your double cows to a pig if you want the resource or just prefer pig (I don't actually know in which order they get cycled). Fun, but rather fringe. Tier 3 gives a city bonus, again, which gives +20% to living units production, birthes them with the strong promotion, and also gives 1 specialist slot of each type. Nice, but probably not worth to keep an archmage for.
on the training yard, which I have one of), whip a settler for 5 pop (if my assumptions are correct,
. Maybe a worker, at 75h? That would just return 15h into the ritual, and cost 2 pop. Doesn't seem justified. The temple is an option - it costs 100h, we get a 100% bonus, so could whip it for 2 pop, but have take care to not hit the limit. 
). Would be nice to upgrade them to chariots. Or keep them on the melee line? Not sure if I ever want to research warhorses (upgrade chariot -> knight), but probably yes?
), he's not THAT terrifying. I'm some 30 turns away from theology and high priests with super collateral on current breakeven (would fit in Sorcery, but also would increase beaker output). 