Gotta Catch 'Em All! Hiding Kneel plays the Svartalfar

[HidingKneel]

I wanna be the very best
Like no one ever was
To catch them is my real test
To train them is my cause

[HidingKneel]

Welcome all!

This game, I'll be playing this guy:



Wait, that's not quite right... it's more like this...



Well, that's closer but there's something missing. I can't quite put my finger on it...



There we go. Volanna of the Svartalfar! As you might have surmised, I plan to make capturing animals the centerpiece of my gameplan. In fact, I might just shut down research after animal husbandry, and run 100% gold to pay for what I call "zoo maintenance" . We'll see, we'll see.

[HidingKneel]

Turn 0 is in!

Here's our starting position:



Where to settle, where to settle? Settling in place has a lot to recommend it: plains hill, fresh water, lots of forests. Another option is the plains hill south of the gold tile. That can work four specials rather than two (if we count floodplains as a special). It lacks the long-term potential of settling in place, since it's got three water tiles and two tundra in the BFC, and doesn't get fresh water. It was a tough call, so I made a quick sandbox. Looks like settling in place actually will actually let me get started a little bit faster (first settler on turn 27 rather than turn 29), due primarily to the delay caused by having to move the settler (1 turn) and the shade (2 turns). So I guess if settling in place is better earlier and better later, it's clear what to do!



Not a completely ideal location: it means no Deruptus in the capital. But you can't have everything. Next city I'll probably put on that other plains hill.

I settled the shade as a sage, since it looks like commerce will be our early bottleneck. Next decision: what to tech? No riverside tiles, no calendar resources, and our corn has a forest on it. So no reason whatsoever to go for calendar/agrarianism. Crafting would let us work the wines to our south, but that seems like a pretty minor boost. I want animal husbandry soonish, but that can wait until we get the economy on its feet. I decided to beeline education (should be able to get there by turn 20, barring unforseeable good or bad luck). That'll double as an economic tech (cottages everywhere!) and a military tech (enabling apprenticeship/conquest).

Oh, and what's this?



Commodore, you saucy minx! How can I resist an epic dungeon in my backyard? I'm sending my starting scout over there ASAP.

Check out the demographics:



As you can see, the Svartalfar already have a commanding lead in almost every category. This game will be over in no time!

[HidingKneel]

So, we're playing the Svartalfar, eh? For purposes of comparison, let's see how they stack up against their goody-goody cousins.

Unique qualities: Both elven civs have the ability to build improvement on top of forests. This is awesome, and makes a beeline to Way of the Forests almost mandatory. Looks like I'll be racing Kyan for it. Luckily, it doesn't matter terribly much if I win that race (though it would be handy).
They also have the same banned buildings (like siege workshops, and alchemy labs in standard FFH). What else? The Svartalfar have the ability to kidnap great people from other players. In practice, this is completely useless: it just means no one will ever open borders with me.
Advantage: neither.

Unique units: Both get a horse archer replacement: Fyrdwell for the Ljosalfar, Nyxkin for the Svartalfar. These are functionally equivalent to horse archers, but don't require horses (Fyrdwell require deer instead, while Nyxkin don't require anything IIRC). The Ljosalfar also get flurries (super late-game crossbowman replacements, completely irrelevant), while the Svartalfar get illusionists: mage replacements, whose spells are not able to kill. This has obvious drawbacks, but can also synergize well with assassins. Advantage: neither.

Civ traits: The Ljosalfar get the dextrous trait, which adds +1 to the offensive strength of archery units. This kind of sucks, because why would you want to attack with archery units? The Svartalfar instead get sinister, which adds +1 to the offensive strength of recon units. This is awesome, especially in the early game (strength 3 scouts >>>> strength 2 scouts). Advantage: Svartalfar.

World Spell: The Ljosalfar get March of the Trees, which is situationally awesome. The Svartalfar get Veil of Night, which makes all of your units Hidden Nationality. Completely useless, especially in a MP game. Advantage: Ljosalfar.

Starting techs: The Ljosalfar get exploration, which is not so great as a starting worker tech: you can't benefit from roads until you have other worker techs or other cities. However, it does mean that the Ljosalfar have the possibility to pop hunting from huts as early as turn 0: a rarity, but awesome when it happens. The Svartalfar start with agriculture instead, which is generally more useful. Even when there aren't farms to build, it synergizes with a beeline to education, which I'm planning to take advantage of. Advantage: Svartalfar.

Palace Mana: Both elven civs start with nature mana. On top of that, the Ljosalfar get air mana (useless for adepts, pretty good once you get mages) and life mana (situationally useful. Might be handy against the Sheaim, though Life II mages arrive much, much later than pyre zombies).
The Svartalfar instead get shadow mana (situationally useful) and mind mana. Mind mana is great, and synergizes well with Faeryl's arcane trait. The economy can benefit early on from having an inspiration adept in every city. Those adept can accrue lots of experience, netting you lots of illusionists in the mid-game. That's not as appealing a strategy for Volanna, who isn't arcane. But it's still a very nice mana type to have (and one of the prereqs for building the tower of divination). Also worth noting: nature mana is worth more to the Svartalfar than to the Ljosalfar, since Nature II (poisoned blade) synergizes with the sinister trait. Advantage: Svartalfar.

Leaders: In standard FFH, the Svartalfar only get one leader: Faeryl Viconia. Her traits (Arcane/Raiders) don't really do anything for your economy. But that's where the new girls come in. Volanna's expansive, which is decent enough. And aggressive looks like it will have awesome synergy with the sinister trait. I'd say it makes her a solid competitor with Thessa, say. But none of the Svartalfar leaders are nearly as good as Arendel. Advantage: Ljosalfar.

Heroes: The Ljosalfar get Gilden Silveric, who is one of the earliest available heroes but also one of the weakest. The Svartalfar get Alazkan the Assassin, available at poisons. In single-player, Alazkan is basically an "I win" button. The AI just has no idea how to handle him. Even in multiplayer, I'd expect him to be one of the strongest heroes. Not because you can abuse his hidden nationality promotion, but because of his equipment. Alazkan starts with the Black Mirror, which lets him summon an illusionary copy of himself (complete with all promotions). You can then attack with the illusionary copy of Alazkan, without having to worry about losing the fight. The illusion can't kill units, but it can redline them, making it easy for the real Alazkan (or any other assassin) to mop up. But you don't need to keep the mirror with Alazkan. If you give it to a strong unit without the marksman promotion (say, a religious hero), then you've got a cost-free way to break the top defender in pretty much any stack. The only downside is that the poisons tech comes late, is quite expensive, and doesn't have any economic uses. Advantage: I'd say Ljosalfar in this setting, since games seem to be decided early.

But don't take my word for it! This game will feature the Ljosalfar and Svartalfar going head-to-head. I tried to declare on Arendel on turn 0, but I guess I need to actually meet her first. Well, something to look forward to .

[HidingKneel]

Turn 1 is in! Our scout is on a collision course with destiny:



I'll start popping it next turn, so the result should be in at the beginning of turn five.

It looks like four players have settled by now, so the demographics are a bit more informative:



Let me try my hand at reading this thing. I'm leading in MFG, which means nobody has settled their shade as an engineer. Somebody's got a GNP of 9, which means they must not have settled their shade yet. I'll guess that's Bob, since he presumably moved his settler a number of tiles on turn 1.
Lead GNP is three points higher than mine: that's presumably one of the creative leaders (Kyan or Mardoc) working a tile that gives a point of commerce. Crop yield of 2 indicates someone is working a tile that gives no food. I'm guessing that's also Bob, since Thessalonica is industrious and gets more milage out of hammers when going worker first.

Question for any general lurkers: in EitB, hidden nationality strips racial promotions. Does that include sinister? If I was to actually use the worldspell,
what would a Svartalfar scout look like to the other players?

[HidingKneel]

Turn 2 opens with an event!



Not bad. Scored 49 gold, which is not easy to come by at this stage of the game.

Our scout took a little detour on her way to the Broken Sepulchre:



Another unique feature, right next door. Not of much use for the time being though; there's a lot of jungle in the way. Going to have to research bronzeworking at some point, but not in the immediate future.

Everyone's settled a city at this point:



From the demos, I'm guessing someone settled their shade as an engineer.

Borders expanded at end of turn:



Next up: opposition analysis!

[HidingKneel]

Alright, opponent analysis time! Let's see what we're up against. Four out of the six leaders in this game are all-new, so I'm mostly theorizing about how they'll play. In rough order of "how much they terrify me", we have:

Yell0w, playing Shekinah of the Sidar.

Yell0w and I have roughly the same amount of experience: we're both on our fourth MP game here, relative newcomers to RB. He did utterly crush me in EitB XXII (game ongoing, but that's not much of a spoiler). But I'm not too worried about him this time, because of the leader he chose. Shekinah is charismatic and arcane. Clearly the theory is to head down the arcane line, and try to set up some kind of machine for generating shades through passive xp gain. I imagine that could be pretty strong in the late game, but I have a feeling this game will be decided a lot earlier than that. Early on, the Sidar look like the most fragile civ in the game (with the Svartalfar coming in a close second), which I expect to be pretty significant with two rush civs in play. Also of note: like us, the Sidar unlock their hero at Poisons. So we've got a little bit of competition, there. Significant because whoever unlocks the tech first probably also has a lock on Aeron's chosen.

Bobchillingworth playing Thessalonica of the Elohim.

Bob's played in a lot more of these games than I have, and Thessalonica looks like she'll make a great builder, with the Industrious and Spiritual traits. She was my second choice (apparently Bob and I both wanted Volanna first, Thessalonica second). He'd be a lot higher up on the threat-o-meter if I didn't expect him to build.

Amelia playing as Mahala of the Doviello.

Mahala now has the expansive trait, which means she isn't as terrible as she used to be. Still, I think an early rush is almost mandatory for the Doviello. I'd really rather not be on the receiving end of that. Unfortunately, we're one of the most appealing targets.

Kyan playing as Arendel Phaedra of the Ljosalfar. Well, I've already pretty much laid out my thoughts on how we stack up against the Ljosalfar. I think they're probably a stronger civ overall (at least with Arendel as leader). Kyan mentioned that he wasn't going to do any micromanagement this game, but I'd imagine he'll still play a very strong game: I've only read the FFH threads on this site, but it looks like he's either won or is in the process of winning every game he's been in. Since he has already declared war on the Winter Court in the tech thread, I'd say that makes him pretty dangerous.

Mardoc playing as Averax the Cambion of the Sheaim. Averax was my third choice. An aggressive/creative leader for the Sheaim. Not sure I understand the reasoning behind "creative", but it'll give him an economic leg up on Tebryn. Normally, the Sheaim have the option of trying to kill everyone early with pyre zombies, or trying to kill everyone later with mages. With the summoner trait replaced by aggressive, it seems pretty obvious that Mardoc is going to favor the first. Pyre zombies have been nerfed a little in EitB, but they still look like one of the scariest things you could be up against in the early game. And Mardoc's a strong player.

So, the upshot. Two early rush civs (Doviello, Sheaim), one civ that can't be rushed (Elohim), another that is quite difficult to rush (Ljosalfar). That leaves the Svartalfar and the Sidar in a pretty unpleasant spot. Fortunately, we're not completely defenseless! The aggressive trait ought to help keep us alive, and the education beeline won't hurt either. Early on, aggressive sinister scouts could be pretty annoying for the other players, and possibly useful for choking (though unfortunately they can't pillage). With wildlands on, I'll definitely go for animal husbandry early. My initial scout gets better than 50% odds on bears; with a little bit of luck, I might be able to scrape together a decent early military without investing much in the way of hammers.

Oh: another turn came in. It said "hit enter to end turn", so I did, and that was that. It occurred to me belatedly that it might be a good idea to run 80% science for one turn, just to get my cash total over the 50gp mark. Never know when I might get the Ceridwen event, and it'd be a shame to miss it.

[Commodore]

Shekinah is actually Arc/Cre, miserably enough.

[HidingKneel]

Shekinah is actually Arc/Cre, miserably enough.

Oops. Man, there's a lot of creative leaders in this game. Making my GNP look bad.

Turn came in. Fiddled with the science slider, hit enter, sent on. The awesome stuff? That's next turn:



(Note: Yell0w is the first to a tech. Probably agriculture, unless that's a hut tech.)

[HidingKneel]

Turn 5 is in!

Did I promise you something awesome? Well, here it is: