FFH Adventure X: On Erebus as it is in Hell

[Qgqqqqq]

FFH Adventure X: On Erebus as it is in Hell



Agares whispered to you, promising your wildest dreams - access to the gems of creation, to shape your land as you wish. But he demanded a price - isolation, limiting your ambitions to one city. You yearn to demonstrate your mastery from this ivory tower, to utterly surpass the sprawling civilisations around you.




Special rules:


This scenario is a one city challenge where you get to choose your land. You may design the 3-ring city radius of your starting location as you desire, with just a few limitations.

1. You're designing only the base land, not any improvements like farms or towns. That includes unique improvements!
   
2. Flood plains or oasis may only go on underlying desert tiles. (No 5 food grass floodplains or oasis on turn 1.)
   
3. Flood plains or oasis may not contain a resource, unless that resource would normally appear in the desert (gold, incense, salt, copper, iron etc. - but no corn or wheat!)
   
4. No forest on water tiles. Forest may go on any land tile. Not ancient forests though!
   
5. No goody huts.
   

Further notes:

• Don't forget the city centre square.
  
• Other than flood plains/oasis, there is no limitation on resource placement.
  
• You may choose water to make your city coastal. (One water tile diagonal from the settler will make a lake, not ocean.)
  
• You may also choose lakes (remember a water tile orthogonally touching ocean will become ocean itself, not lake.)
  
• Every tile is riverside. If for some reason you don't want rivers, you can remove them.
  
• Outside the city's fat cross are available certain strategic resources: gunpowder, mithril, four mana, typed metamagic mana, reagants.
  
• No other resource is reachable, so what you choose is what you get. Remember that some late-game units can require unusual resources! Note: on Extramodmod some towers take five mana - so plan around where you'll get your fifth from if you're aiming that way.
  
• This game is played on ExtraModMod, which incorporates Multiple Production Mod, meaning that more than one unit/building can be built in a turn by a high-production city.
  

Scoring

This adventure is about toying with the AI and demonstrating your manifest superiority. As such, the scoring is as follows:

• +1 point for every technology you know that nobody else does.
  
• -1 point for every technology known by any other civ but not by you
  
• +10 points for winning the game, or otherwise 5 points for playing to completion (if you lose) or for 200t
  
• +5 points for fastest victory of each type, and a further +5 points for the fastest victor of any type
  
• +2 points for rescuing Brigit
  
• +8 points for winning by conquest without ever capturing or razing an opponent's city
  
• +1 point for every resource your city has access to on a turn of your choice - whether provided by tiles, buildings, or acquired through trade
  
• +1 point for every religion your city is the Holy City of
  
• -8 points for each edited tile that accidentally violates the rules above. It's not expected that anyone will incur this, but this allows a remedy for scoring without disqualifying an entire game.
  

If you have any queries about the rules, please post them below.




Please also take a screenshot of your city on turns 100, 150, 200, and the last turn for bragging rights - we will be comparing commerce, pop, and hammers. If you've won the game before then, that's it's own form of bragging.




SETUP:


To save the sponsor's sanity, we're going to have you simply design the land yourself in Worldbuilder from the starting save. It's unavoidable that you'll see the map in doing this, but that's not a big deal in a one-city challenge and with no goody huts. Please take a screenshot of your edits on t1 in case any questions arise. Make sure not to edit anything outside the 3rd-ring radius of the starting location, and not to enter Worldbuilder again after turn 1.




As you might realise, this scenario owes a debt to Adventure 48, but adapted to FFH2. As one's civilisation affects how you can use your land in FFH2, there are three separate saves available: with the Kuriotates, the Svartalfar, or the Lanun.



Alternative starts:

Installation: as noted, this Adventure is played on the ExtraModMod game mode. My summary of changes, including links to the changelog, can be found here. Please find the installation instructions here.




Closing Day: July 14, 2023. You may post your results earlier than then, but please don't look at anyone else's threads until you've finished.

[shallow_thought]

I will say that my first reaction to ExtraModMod (just installed it and running a trial game, as I've never played it before) is that I feel the last thing FFH needed was more "stuff" ... but the installation instructions were nice and smooth.

[DaveV]

1. Are we allowed to move the settler (to grab Remnants, say ), or must we SIP?

2. Do you have a comprehensive list of which resources are allowed on desert? I can look this up myself, so don't put in the extra work if you don't already know.

3. Are all the EMM features supposed to be enabled? Looking specifically at Advanced Tactics, BarbsPlus, and Technology Propogation.

4. The installation instructions you linked say to download beta 6, but the latest update is beta 8, and there's also a beta 7. Which are we supposed to use?

[Qgqqqqq]

You can move to grab the remnants, but remember that you can only alter the three rings you start on - so you'll be giving up a number of modifiable tiles. I considered outlawing moving but think it's a reasonable decision.

I think it should just be gold, incense, salt, copper, iron, and mana, unless I'm missing something.

Most features are not enabled - in particular, advanced tactics and technology propagation are not. Tech trading is allowed. I didn't turn barbsplus off.

I'll check my installation. I believe its the latest patch.

[Thoth]

Just to confirm: We are allowed to add non-typed mana nodes?

[Thoth]

How do I turn off Growth Control in my city?  If I had wanted to prevent growth, I'd have clicked on the button in the city screen.

[Qgqqqqq]

You are allowed to add typed or untyped mana. You may not add the improvements.

Re Growth control, you can turn that off at the BUG menu (ctrl-alt-o to 'FFH'), or in the city screen by pressing on the citizens button so it's not highlighted.

[Thoth]

You are allowed to add typed or untyped mana. You may not add the improvements.

Re Growth control, you can turn that off at the BUG menu (ctrl-alt-o to 'FFH'), or in the city screen by pressing on the citizens button so it's not highlighted.

Finally found where the damn button is to turn this annoying behavior off.     This really should be "off" by default.

[shallow_thought]

You are allowed to add typed or untyped mana. You may not add the improvements.

Re Growth control, you can turn that off at the BUG menu (ctrl-alt-o to 'FFH'), or in the city screen by pressing on the citizens button so it's not highlighted.

Finally found where the damn button is to turn this annoying behavior off.     This really should be "off" by default.

Each to their own. It's one of the things I rather like about MNAI/XMM, given the absence of slavery. And yes, this lazy mindset of not managing every tile, every turn is why Thoth is  going to be ruling Erebus while I probably end up looking at the smoking remains of my empire and go "maybe next time" .

[Qgqqqqq]

No, I strongly agree. I hate the avoid unhappy setting. I use unhappy faces to tell me when I need new happy sources, and in FFH2 there's all sorts of reasons to grow into unhappiness - governors manors, unit costs, etc.