Fair Fairy Faeryl's Fell Fair Folk Fare Fairly Fair

[Bobchillingworth]

To make up for the thread title, here's a random image dump from my HD:

[Bobchillingworth]

Okay, so I'm playing as this sweet, hundreds-of-years-old thang:





Arcane and Raiders (and Sinister), leading the Svartalfar (henceforth known as Svarts). I think we all know what the deal is here, so I'll spare myself having to write a "how to play elfs" summary.


I placed Faeryl as my second pick for the same reason I had Flauros as my first: I want an easy-bake economy with a relatively straightforward civ to go with it. This is the first full, serious game of FFH I'll be playing after a long break & I don't want to have to screw around with complicated Malakim priest upgrade shenanigans or Khazad vault management, or anything that forces me to spend a lot of time thinking about boring stuff. I placed the Svarts before the Ljo since I've already won a PBEM with the Nice Elves and having Sinister Scouts lends itself to a more interesting early game.


Sadly base FFH Svarts are actually a little worse than their EitB counterparts. Rangers are more expensive, as are Recon techs, Faeyrl is the only leader option & there aren't a couple town-boosting civics. Svarts are still a pretty strong civ on their own merits however, with weaknesses generally being side-effects of their strengths:


Strength #1:

Lots of nice unit options. Resource-less commando HA, Arcane-boosted Illusionists, commando recon units with high attack strength, totally kickass Assassin hero.

Counterpoint:

Lots of decent units means lots of techs spread out all across the tree. Getting PoL (for land forestry), Illusionists, Assassins, Rangers, and economic techs is a lot more work than Aristofarms -> Vampires, and that isn't even including incredibly useful but somewhat beaten-path wonders like the Esus Shrine.


Strength #2:

Illusion summons are fantastic stack defenders against most living units & are good for feeding kills to Assassins.

Counterpoint:

Illusions cannot kill, meaning any stack with a lot of summoners is going to need a comparable number of escorts who can actually murder stuff. Which is very expensive.


Strength #3:

The Elven Economy is very powerful once it gets going.

Counterpoint:

The Elven Economy is going to be very slow against two, potentially four financial civilizations, and mandates a detour into priest and FoL techs to truly exploit.




So with that said, my general gameplan is to mostly play it by my long, pointed ears. Prepare for a typical Elven Economy builder game while looking for aggressive opportunities, tech to recon / summoner stacks if unmolested, grab the Nox Noctis if possible, and avoid pursuing multiple unit lines where it will leave me with a shallow tech pool while my opponents dive into the game-ending deep end.

[Bobchillingworth]

It's time to once again embarrass myself with my appalling lack of knowledge of most of the people I'm playing against! Now with all the formatting of my PBEM 54 thread, but only 25% of the humor!


Opponents Analysis


Dantski - Rhoanna of the Hippus

Okay, so, Dantski. Has he even played in a FFH game before? I'd check, but I'm an indolent bum & prefer to waste my time writing about how I prefer to waste my time. Anyway I think he's like a weak-to-moderate BtS player who has Been Around The Block a few times, whatever that means. Might be one of the weaker players in this game, but Exp combined with crazy broken base-FFH Fin is nothing to sneer at. A builder leader with a war civ and perhaps middling player, I'm curious whether he'll builder himself into obscurity or exploit his economy to put together a nasty mounted army. Actually he'll probably just get eaten by Ellimist or something, FUCK.


Sian - Flauros of the Calabim

Oh look, it's some asshole stealing my mindless vampiric power-pick. Just kidding Sian, I love you in the meaningful, heterosexual way only almost complete strangers on the internet can. I really need to lurk more of Sian's games, because I know he has participated in like a million of them, but I still cannot recall almost anything he has done. Or maybe he just needs to write more compelling reports I would be pretty goshdamn worried about his selection if I thought he was one of the top FFH players on RB; instead I'm only mildly terrified. Very likely he'll fall victim to some unfortunate mishap before he can get the Unstoppable Vampire Pain Train up to full speed. Hopefully he does something like what I did way back in PBEM I & builds a bajillion Bloodpets and Catapults when he should be beelining aristofarms.


GreyWolf - Varn of the Malakim

Why do I hardly know anybody playing in this game?! Ah whatever, I'll give it a shot anyway: Hatched from a solid gold egg laid by a space alien deep within the Himalayas & raised by occult plumbers, GreyWolf is looking resplendent in this year's late-Fall collection of Malakim trait-switching and priest-upgrades. Be aware that the lines have blurred, the game has changed and the fix is in. Dow +34.50, RBI 63, Mood


Ellimist - Perpentarch of the Balseraphs

Ah, Ellimist. We have dedi-lurked each other for at least a half-dozen games now; between the two of us, I think we make a pretty good team, with Ellimist correcting my economic deficiencies, my pointing out details he sometimes misses, and both of us bouncing increasingly ludicrous plans off each other. He's definitely a better player than me, and should be the favorite to win this game. Actually, going by win record alone he's probably the best FFH player on RB. That said, he does have a couple deficiencies / quirks- he tends to prioritize vertical growth even when a game calls for expansion, and he loves very complicated plans which are awesome when they work, but occasionally need a lurker's hand to keep from growing out of control (Ellimist in almost every game: "I WANT 40-PROMOTION ULTIMATE FLESH GOLEMS"). I don't want to overemphasize my own contributions to his games though, he's a very capable player in really every aspect of FFH. Ellimist loves Perpentarch, who I think is an interesting and fun pick, but kind of middling compared with all the insane, broken power base FFH has to offer (even with Keelyn banned). I expect to see a lot of Mages (which sucks for me since illusions don't restore to full health after winning combats with most summons) and maybe some dirty tricks with Harlequins. Odds of winning the game: near 90%.


Bobchillingworth- Faeryl of the Svarts

This one time, on RB, I won a PBEM... Ah, but that was a while ago, with the EitB mod, and the No Settlers setting. Back again, now with the Bad Elfs for some two-fisted, double-breasted butt-kicking action. I was going to write here about how gosh-darn rusty I am with FFH, but I think I've already done the whole self-pitying, expectation-lowering routine in like three other threads by this point, so eh. I promise to fight very hard and do my best and put a McDonalds in the cafeteria & soda in all the drinking fountains. Chance of Summoning Hyborem: Less than you might think, but more than you could imagine.

[BRickAstley]

Reserved for running commentary on how you ruin the game and your thread title hurts brains.

[DaveV]

Since my mind is stuck in the 70s, your title made me think of this song:

[Bobchillingworth]

And we're off! Let's look at the start:








Good Heavens, this is the worst start I have ever had, ever. Everything about this start blows utterly. In no particular order:

• I have two scouts to start instead of what should be a scout and a warrior- actually, this is kind of an advantage since my scouts are Sinister and I think we asked for no lairs near our starts, so they're kind of a boon.
  
• NO FORESTS. AS ELVES.
  
• Settler lacks starting Settler promotions- hopefully this is the case for everyone, or this is my formal request for a restart.
  
• No economic resources visible. My only commerce is going to be from cottages (these will take a long time to tech) a small amount from river farms, and coast (NO). Who does this sort of start seem semi-acceptable for? Financial civs who can make up for the lack of resources with river cottage and/or aristofarms My economy relies on forests, which I don't have.
  
• Almost no production, not helped by lack of forests.
  
• Tons of water everywhere, but I'm not going to have time to putz around with the obviously super-powerful OO because I've got to beeline Leaves so that I can grow some bloody forests.
  
• Seriously, where the fuck are my forests
  

Ugh whatever. Settled in place, demographics are less than pleasing:






Maybe I just suck at reading them, but the 4 production someone has suggests they have their wheat next to their capital, whereas I couldn't have gotten both my 2-hammer plant and instant access to the wheat. I am assuming almost mirrored starts, because holy shit they had better be.



I just don't know what to say. I guess I'll use my two scouts to see if I have forests anywhere, since turn 0 is too early to declare the game a disaster. Maybe everyone is burdened with an unutterably terrible capital and there's a huge beautiful woodsy glen I'll discover in a few turns, and I'm not on the anemic, barren donut I suspect I am. Well whatever, I think I've pissed off half the BTS community with my PB16 lurker thread comments, perhaps I'll get started burning FFH bridges here

[Bobchillingworth]

And now I guess I have to replay my turn, except I can't because the game thinks I'm "Roo" and require a password. Maybe the new save will have forests!

[Bobchillingworth]

Voted to ban Cultists because otherwise Varn-player (I forget who is leading what civ) is going to rush them with his WS and make this game a complete mess.

[Merovech]

Oh, well, about the starting settler bonus, I forgot that's a thing. Nobody has it. Been playing too much BTS lately.

[Bobchillingworth]

So all plans are subject to change since I haven't seen, like, 98% of the map, but right now I'm thinking going AC -> Myst. Elder Council + scientist specialist provides at least some minimal beakers, and gets a great sage cooking for an academy or settling, plus Godking means +2 hammers at the capital, for whatever that's worth. Then probably Education after that, and I'm guessing a long, painful beeline to PoL.


Incredibly tenuous build plan is worker -> some combination of warriors and scouts until I reach happy cap -> settler. In my test games I went generally worker -> warrior -> worker -> warrior -> worker -> settler, but those games had forests and more resources to connect, so I needed extra labor early.