So, as I mentioned, I've been reading up on the EitB pitboss, which I recommend you also do if you have a little time. I've copied/pasted some of the more useful posts from the early pages of the winning thread (don't be intimidated by the size of the spoiler - some of the last posts I just thumbed to grab to make sure, the best ones are right at the start).
(May 3rd, 2012, 21:17)Mardoc Wrote: So, chatting with Ellimist, he points out that in PBEM18, the Ljo weren't able to Bloom inside Mercurian borders. Kinda/mostly negates that bit of awesomeness. I haven't tested to confirm, but I'm not really sure I need to.
What are some civs that are really good in a teamer?
Expansive category:
Quote:Clan - Warrens! Exp/Spi goes well with warrens, too, for settler and temple spam. Can get around Barb/banned libraries by gifting gold to a tech teammate - get around maintenance by gifting cities. Awesome support civ for any plan - build the cities someone else uses. Assumes limited city gifting is allowed.
Kurios - Big fast, Exp for settler spam, Philo + Enclaves = mucho tech power. Sure, units aren't doubled, but city sizes are :neenernee. And Tailors/Jewelers put the icing on the cake, +2 happy to all allies. Their main limit is irrelevant, since the partners can own all the cities.
Less awesome in a team setting, but still good: Thessa!: Expansive elf forests! Arcane to provide some contribution to war later. Falamar: Extremely map-dependent, but Cove-powered Expansive is pretty awesome when it works. Rhoanna: Again, make gold and cities, feed to someone else. Mahala: Expansive, sure. What else does she bring to the table? Not a whole lot
War category:
Quote:Calabim - Governor's Manors are nice. Vamps are normally a bit nerfed by slow tech pace...well, that's what a good ally is for! Imagine a new Calabim city, founded by a Clan settler, immediately getting a Temple, some soldiers of Kilmorph into its Governor's Manor - it can grow very quickly into a Vamp producing powerhouse. Main downside: quirky tech path. Don't pick them with anyone who also cares about tech path.
Amurites: Yeah, I know you've done them already, by proxy. But Valledia can do insta-mages without even breathing hard! And Govannon can make all the Spiritual Priests into insta-mages too! There's an awful lot of power in the arcane tree, add in Govannon to make things really fun!
She'd go well with Druids, too....
Illians: Ice mana, baby. And Arcane/Cha. Ice elementals are awesome, Ice archmagi are even better. Granted, they don't have a lot of economic power, and they don't get along nicely with sharing BFC's.
Others...many. Most civs could be war civs, really, given the right backing.
Tech civs:
Quote:Amelanchier: Philo, Elf econ, what's not to like? Ok, Raiders is a bit 'meh', but you can't have everything. Millions of cottages, with super high city sizes and libraries and specialists out the wazoo.
Downside, he takes a while to really get going.
Einion: Phi/Cha is a nice early game tech civ. Corlindale is nice too. Might be able to build Warrens, depending on how exactly city gifting works with Tolerant.
Or, any civ with Phi. There's a lot of them. Or the Svarts.
Tech civ's job is simple: built cottages, work cottages, build Academies/Libraries/etc, dump all the commerce through the slider. That can be just about anybody.
Now, granted, these are first thoughts, and likely others will agree with me and take some from us.
But, assuming the elven econ doesn't share, [SIZE="4"]I'm now convinced we'd much rather grab our Expansive civ in the first round[/SIZE]. Which would be, well, probably [SIZE="4"]Jonas as #1, with Cardith as a close #2[/SIZE]. Jonas is just the consummate sprawler, Cardith is better at support. Both civs have extremely good points, balanced out in normal play by pieces that just don't matter in a teamer. We'll find our 3rd choice tech civ a lot closer to our 1st choice, than our 3rd choice Expansive buddy is to Jonas. And, well, war civ - I'm not convinced any is superior - what really matters is the production base and tech base we can put behind it. Which means we pick it last. Sure, we base our tech path around the war civ more than the others, but we can make all sorts of crazy things work out.
Err...assuming we can have one of Jonas or Cardith. I rate the rest of the Expansive leaders about par with each other.
(May 3rd, 2012, 23:49)Ellimist Wrote: I favor the Clan for several reasons:
[SIZE="4"]All settlers on sale! 75% off![/SIZE]
This is something that exponentially benefits the whole team. Once warrens are up, a typical Clan city will easily be able to produce a pair of settlers in less than 10 turns. Many cities can do it even faster, and the only thing that usually stops the Clan from filling up the map is maintenance costs. If we rely on the Clan to produce our settlers, the other two civs will be able to divert those hammers into other things while maintaining a strong horizontal growth rate.
Soldiers of Kilmorph and slaves can provide hammers to another civilization's cities. Warrens get around the 50% hammer efficiency penalty that SoK rushing has, and this is usually very helpful for the Clan to get new cities going faster by providing vital infrastructure. In a typical Clan game, this is mostly markets, warrens, and wonders. In a team game, this would be doubly useful because it would, for example, allow a food-rich/hammer-poor Calabim city to get a Governor's Manor much faster. In addition, Jonas can change religions frequently with no anarchy and produce enough priests to create temples for all three players.
[SIZE="4"]All other units on sale! 50% off![/SIZE]
This usually is what makes up for any technology disadvantage that the Clan has. Nobody else can build an army faster, whether we're talking about workers, ritualists, or assassins. Overwhelming numbers can often make up for a tech disadvantage, but in this game we're not likely to have such a disadvantage, because...
Once we tech Currency, our Clan player will never need to produce another beaker. He can just do 100% gold, adopt civics like consumption, and give the gold to the other members of the team. They can run a higher slider and build libraries and academies to take advantage of it. It's not that difficult to get to Currency quickly because it's the #1 tech preference for a great merchant bulb. The only prerequisite we'd need would be Code of Laws, which we'd likely prioritize anyway.
Basically, the Clan is the perfect civ to provide support to other civs on a team. The warrens hammer advantage is one that can be exported, and the acceleration it provides to the other teams can dramatically improve their snowballs. The science penalty in the early game is significantly reduced, because 2/3 of the team won't be affected. The things that would normally penalize the Clan will be irrelevant or negated. In a team setting, the Clan becomes a top-tier economic civ in addition to its military advantages.
(May 4th, 2012, 07:15)Mardoc Wrote: Now, I should play devil's advocate here I'm still pretty well sold on the Clan, but don't think they're perfect
Clan does have some disadvantages, too, even in a teamer
No starting tech sets the whole team back a bit
Barbarian and no libraries inhibit starting tech rate, too
Those settler and unit sales - they come with a membership fee. Gotta tech Masonry and spend 120 hammers/city on a Warrens.
It's hard to ICS for your friends, since you can only found cities outside their culture
Slow workers
Strong need to go to Kilmorph, which doesn't usually synergize with other civs nearly so well
No good mounted units
Basically: Clan will slow down our start. We'll be teching slower, needing to pick up Masonry and Kilmorph, and pausing for 120 hammers/city in our settler-spam civ. They compensate by speeding up the midgame, but we've got to be on a big enough map/long enough game for that to catch up to an early snowball civ like Kurios, or those benefits don't much matter.
If the land grab is basically over by the time we get to Masonry + 120 hammers/city, for example, then Warrens don't help out nearly as much. If early tech speed becomes vital - say we need to fight off an axe rush or a hippus warcry, then the tech penalties still hurt. We should pay close attention to the map settings/mapmaker hints. If we end up on a map where early speed matters more than eventual power - then we want the Kurios instead.
Edit: An example. Compare to another Expansive civ, and take a hypothetical. Assume we've instantly/freely got all the tech we need.
Clan - first 120 hammers is a Warren. Say an Expansive settler costs in general 60-70 hammers.
Basically - Clan only start to outproduce another expansive civ after a city has made about 300 hammers! And the other civ gets the first cities down earlier, as well.
(May 4th, 2012, 09:30)Mardoc Wrote: Dangit, I lost a post with a lot of thoughts in it.
Well, here's a summary of my thoughts. Might be easier to read anyway .
One thing we need to decide, early, is what overall tech path we want. PBEMX taught me that even having two Palaces and old-style Financial does not make up for having economy of purpose.
Possibilities include:
Religious
Arcane
Vampire
Mundane (eg, Recon line, or Mithril)
Of course we'll mix in some of all, but the primary focus makes a huge difference. Personally - I want an Arcane focus. I've done the others. I think a well-played arcane game can be more powerful than the others, anyway. Good Arcane civs are the Amurites (duh!), Illians, Balseraphs, maybe Thessa of the Ljo, maybe Sheaim.
If you guys disagree, though, I can live with something else. So long as we don't try to simulaneously chase Vampires and every religion on the tree . That doesn't work.
(May 7th, 2012, 14:54)Mardoc Wrote: Darrell, just because you're winning with them doesn't mean they're strong :neenernee
So, we're #2 in the pick order. Dave/Kyan/plako pick before us, the other teams after us.
Pretty decent, actually. I think we can guarantee we get either the Clan or the Kurios. I'm still on the fence as to which of them; presumably Kyan et al will make that decision for us.
Ellimist has been advocating the Amurites in first round, instead, on chat. His argument is pretty straightforward, at the core: Amurites get a heck of a lot of useful bonuses. Govannon, in particular, but also firebows and the WS. And between Org and Cave of Ancestors, it's downright easy to get insta-mages. With potentially three Towers of Divination, it's fairly straightforward to actually get to Govannon and archmages, too. There's a lot of fun corner cases for the Amurites, as well - Govannon-taught priests or druids or heroes.
On balance, though, I think I want to save them for a later round. Here's why:
We can substitute someone else for them and change our gameplan accordingly. It's true that I want an arcane plan and the Amurites are the best for that. But, if we have to, we can instead take a divine approach, or the vamps, or a slightly inferior arcane plan. Or even a straight up mundane approach, like, say, Mithril Chariots .
We can't, however, substitute a different gameplan for the need to build a lot of settlers. No matter what we do, we need a solid economic base to do it from, and that ultimately calls for a lot of cities, a lot of workers, straight-up building. Look at the history here, and you'll find an awful lot of winners with strong economies, and not a whole lot of them with wartoys/traits that overwhelmed economy. Granted, Ellimist's Charadon game was a strong counterexample. But in general, economy >>> anything else.
(May 8th, 2012, 12:48)Mardoc Wrote: Been thinking about this some more, and came to a few conclusions.
First: we don't actually want a Financial civ, not anymore. We already want the Clan to run 0% science and feed gold to the others. We try to do that with a second civ, and we'll end up with gold out our ears, but no beakers. Especially if we're also building Kilmorph temples everywhere. The only way I see to get around that is to unbalance the settlements, so the Philo civ has most of our land, but then we pay too much maintenance, and in any case are applying Fin to not much commerce.
That probably means no Dwarven workers after all. But that doesn't bother me as much as I'd thought, because +25% workrate still only saves worker turns on things that are normally 5 turns or more, which is pretty much just forests and workshops. It might matter more on Normal speed.
Third: there is another way around the worker efficiency question; take a civ that gets hammer bonuses, and just build more workers! I'm tempted to grab one of Elves or Calabim as our third civ, therefore, not intending to do anything with Vamps per se, just have the Governor's Manors.
I think on balance Amurites should probably be our next pick, with Dain. Presuming we have the option, of course. Third pick is looking to be something generic that's a team player - a hammer civ like just described, or another Phi civ (maybe Einion or Sandalphon), or maybe an Industrious civ, or heck, maybe just Perpentach.
(May 10th, 2012, 08:16)Mardoc Wrote: I'm...a bit confused. What happened to the Amurites in your priority lists? I haven't seen anything out of the other teams that rules them out. Firebows could be an excellent defense against Trebs/Warcry, if need be.
That said, I'm mostly in agreement on Decius of the Calabim, since he can be flexible and support just about anything except an early Mysticism. Or be the warmonger himself. I agree that of the traits available still and given the Clan, Org is the most important for the vamps, to get Governor's Manors up super-quick, especially in a teamer.
I'm pretty sure you can gift Vampirism, but if you're not Calabim yourself, all you get is the +10% strength and healing bonus. Feast is Calabim-only.
I'm still tempted by Dain, though! Unless your thinking is that he's likely to still be available later? I'll admit, he doesn't go that well with the Kurios, and probably not that well with Tasunke either, but I could see pairing him with the Luchiurp. And, well, I wouldn't have picked Hippus/Khazad anyway in a free-for-all, so maybe their thinking is orthogonal to mine.
And I really don't see the value in Faeryl, unless a lot else is already chosen. Mostly - I don't wanna go Way of the Forests if I can help it! Plus, assuming Decius, we have two very production heavy civs, with no focus on beakers to make up for it. I think we need Philo more than we need Agriculture!
We pick one, then three are picked, then we get our last pick. So if we can narrow it down to 1, plus four that can get along with them+Clan, we're golden. Don't have to keep things quite so open as before.
Well, the first thing that I see is if we want an Arcane path, we can guarantee a pretty good civ for it. Amurites, Illians, Elves (Faeryl or Thessa), Balseraphs, all are good arcanists. It's a hard choice, though, if we don't get Amurites, because we have to build an arcane path that can still survive 14 turns of nothing. And more than that - Kyan et al haven't picked, but neither Kurio/Malakim nor Khazad/Hippus really works that well with an arcane focus. They want horses, and religions, and chariots/trebs, and really there's not a lot of room there for mages.
Second thing: we could actually do pretty well with a mundane focus, to continue taking advantage of EitB-cheap stuff. Sidar/Svarts for a recon focus, or Bannor/Calabim/Clan for melee/metal, or Ljo/Amurites for bows or something like that. Main downside: I get itchy plotting war without collateral. No matter how cheap your units are, they're not cheaper than summons, and a half-health champion still loses to a healthy axe. Etc.
I guess, all things considered, I want to take Calabim now, then in round three, take the best arcane civ that we can. Which would be something like Amurites > Illians > Balseraphs > Elves. Why those? Well, amurites are obvious. But also because this is the order that is best suited to survive early war, if we're forced to that. Firebows/PoW both could handle warcry, I think, if we move along swiftly.
But I'm still not convinced we don't want Dain now, and the best support civ left in round three. We can live without Governor's Manors.
Technically still here, but I don't want them:
Sheaim - normally pretty bad, now they don't even get AC boosts?
Doviello - no starting tech, only decent trait is Expansive which we already have
Grigori - we have a Spiritual leader. Do we really want a civ that gets zero benefit from religious techs? At least Illians get Temples of the Hand and Priests of Winter. Plus...Always War does not equal XP-shortage . So Adventurers are nerfed.
(May 10th, 2012, 19:42)Ellimist Wrote: While I have no strong objections to the Calabim, I think the Balseraphs are going to be much stronger economically. (Especially if they can export freak shows, with lots of slaves available in eitb.) The Balseraphs have very flexible tech requirements, a strong military, and nothing can really compare to puppetry for magi.
They get the agriculture start we wanted, plus a very strong worldspell and the option of two very strong leaders. Plus they can build elder councils and Loki is useful early.
Quote:Grigori - we have a Spiritual leader. Do we really want a civ that gets zero benefit from religious techs?
I would think that Cassiel and Jonas would synergize pretty well, actually. Having a teammate available to settle temples would erase one of the big drawbacks of the Grigori. They're still not that appealing for round two, but if we can get an adaptive leader in round three...
(May 10th, 2012, 20:01)Mardoc Wrote: Tested, Balseraphs cannot export freak shows, neither with Freaks or with Slaves. In my test, I did verify that I could create freak shows at home, so it's not that.
That said, I do agree that Balseraphs will be much better for tech. Potential of an awful lot of happy cap boosts, plus Revelry, and no, Agri doesn't hurt either . I guess the main question is, do we think we'll be more tech limited, or production limited?
Also, do you prefer Perpentach or Keelyn? I think personally I prefer Perpentach, honestly - I think the million summon strategy has been at least partially nerfed, plus it isn't econ. Having three traits ought to help make up for their unpredictability.
I haven't played a Balseraph game, so I might miss a few of their tricks, but I do like the idea of playing them.
(May 13th, 2012, 11:42)Thoth Wrote: Well, the Amurites are off the table.
My next two picks would be one of:
Einon Logos (Cha/Phi, Ancient Chants, Corlindale, Sanctuary, Reliquaries, Water, Nature, Air Mana from palace, Tolerant).
Depending on the start terrain a Mysticism first while growing out to size 4 and building gobos, scouts and warriors before spitting out 2/3 workers per civ at size 4 under God King. That would give us time (and extra scouts) to possibly make contact with some (all) of the other teams to start slipstreaming their techs. This would also give us the ability to push out a Great Prophet circa t44 to bulb towards WotE. We'll need to add some conventional beakers (around 200-300) in order to fully bulb WotE but this gives us our best shot of founding RoK and by using an Orcish bulb to finish off the tech we stack the odds in favour of founding the religion in our Banker civ.
Overall I think I like Einon better than...
the other option I see is the Svartlar. We'd pick up Ag as our starting tech allowing a worker/Calendar opening. We'd pretty much have to give up on founding RoK as we wouldn't be able to generate a GP in time to bulb (assuming Immortal/Huge map). But Svarts with Leaves can build Sinister 40 h Fawns. Back those up with some Tigers/PoLs and we've got the basis of a decent early army. Main problem here is no chariots, but those hammers can be sunk into Fawns, PoLs, Assassins, Adepts ect instead. Palace mana: Shadow, Nature and Mind. Gives us doubles in Nature, Shadow and Body (which we already have doubled from Orcs/Calabim). That's a pretty good lot of level 1 spells to get on all of our Adepts/Shamans.
(May 13th, 2012, 19:18)Mardoc Wrote:
Thoth Wrote:Are you sure about that? I haven't tested in game (yet). If that is the case, then t0 is probably best use.
Yes, 100%. Tested it at the start of X, tested again yesterday, Vamps eat allies with the WS.
Quote:We are indeed, up to pick.
Y'know, I was all set to make a big pros and cons post, but I decided to test Tolerant. And discovered something very cool: Elohim cities gifted from the Clan, can build Warrens! OTOH, they cannot build Libraries, while homebuilt cities can do so. It appears that passing the city via Calabim doesn't help, it still is a (Clan of Embers) city.
Still - we could potentially have almost every Elohim city with either a Governor's Manor or a Warrens, right?
And Einion would be our Philo leader, for both great people and cheap libraries (in non-Clan gifted cities).
Other civs:
Illians: Priests of Winter and Ice mana. Good, but not great. Auric is still fairly unimpressive even with Arcane.
Bannor: Crusade goes well with Iron for Vamps, good stopgap when the Lacuna hits, otherwise kinda meh
Lanun: Great techers. Very dry map promised, including no water at capitals. Pass.
Elves: I like the elven econ, hate the elven workers. They're slow, and their primary bonus is to hammers. Which will be important, but I really want some tech too Amelanchier's the only Philo leader.
I think I'm down to either Elohim, Ljo, or Bannor as my preferences. I could elaborate, if need be. The fundamental question is: how do we value Tolerant, in a game where the Clan will be founding and giving away most cities? Warrens are awesome! Another civ that can't build Libraries, though, hurts.
Oh, and also, in a conquest game, what tricks do we want to steal from our neighbors? Wanna play with dwarven druids? We probably could...
(May 14th, 2012, 15:22)Mardoc Wrote: I suppose the fundamental question, which I did bring up in chat last night to Ellimist, is what do we see our gameplan becoming?
We have now a Spiritual leader, with excellent Iron Working units, plus lots of benefit from religions, in particular Kilmorph, an Organized leader with excellent Feudalism units. What else fits?
Honestly, at this point, I don't think Arcane fits anymore. Neither Clan nor Calabim can follow along that well, and there's the Lacuna to worry about on top of everything. We'll likely want KotE at least for a million Clan haste Adepts, but not a whole lot of reason to go deeper. Maybe go as far as Divination for our three free techs?
We could focus on the Vampire path and use the others for support. Or we could focus on religious paths and use the Calabim as support. We do have the advantage that, up until Feudalism itself, every tech on the Vamp line has economic benefits; Trade, Writing, etc. The other techs the Vamps really want are Sanitation, Code of Laws, and perhaps Infernal Pact.
Religiously, we really want Kilmorph, but aside from that - maybe a mixture? Priesthood itself would be nice (particularly if we take Elohim), other than that? Maybe this is the game we test out Order? Ashen Veil is also very nice on a Spiritual civ or spread around with cheap Priests for the income.
I dunno, I'm pretty much brainstorming at this point. I feel we've chosen two civs for their individual strengths, but don't have much synergy. We need the third civ to be someone not too far from a path we might take anyway, and Elohim/Bannor both fit the bill. That's my main objection to Svarts/Illians, at this point - they each add another temptation tech-wise, when we already have incentive to cover a huge portion of the tech tree from our other civs.
(May 15th, 2012, 10:02)Mardoc Wrote: So, opponent analysis time. I'll leave DaveV/Kyan/plako/jkaen? until after they've made their final pick.
Team Reddit:
Well, obviously they're newcomers. They seem to have their heads on straight, though. Fantasic Sid earned his name with code diving to make Pitboss possible, Hart certainly talks a good game. I think they know FFH pretty well, therefore And they joined as a team who'd played together in the past, so should have pretty decent teamwork going.
Main question is what they've figured out about MP warfare. They might perhaps underestimate mobility/collateral like most newbies do. Or they could know everything and teach us a few tricks too.
They picked: Kandros (Fin, Agg) of Khazad Tasunke (Agg, Rai) of Hippus Sandalphon (Ind, Phi) of Sidar
A fairly powerful set, if they get their toys on the board. An Industrious leader for workers (and potential dramatic econ boost from Wanes), we've seen the power of a Tasunke Warcry, and dwarves for either gold or production, dwarven druids are an option here too. Trebs go well with a Warcry, potentially. And, well, there's some synergy here. HBR/Construction is enough tech for them for a while, leaves room for either trying to boost Sidar, or to head for one nice bonus somewhere else.
However: No Expansive, a desire to stack up tons of gold, and mundane units are their cool uniques. They need a small map or other early-game dominance. No expansive, in particular, will hurt, as will the lack of fast collateral. If they're going to win, they're going to do it with Horsemen/Trebs/Divided Souls, not with something later. I expect them to ruin someone's day, then fade into irrelevance. Unless the map favors them or they get underestimated, in which case they'll be a threat. In any case, we'll have to keep a wary eye their direction.
nabaxo/Amelia/WarriorKnight
I'm not hugely impressed with nabaxo's performance in XIX
Took forever and a day to research Calendar, not enough workers
Amelia is erratic. Flashes of brilliance, can get locked into a plan even if it's not a good one, doesn't have the micro to back it up. Still, stick your hand into a bad spot and he'll bite it off.
WarriorKnight, though...his Elohim were pretty strong in PBEM3. Although he underestimated Thoth like everyone else, I don't expect that to repeat.
These three - it depends on how they mesh as a team. If WK ends up doing the micro for Amelia's flash of brilliance, with nabaxo helping tweak, then they'll be formidable. If nabaxo does the micro while Amelia gets stubborn about a silly plan and WK goes off and does something else, not so much. I think they're in different parts of the world, to add insult to injury.
Cardith of Kuriotates Varn of Malakim Valledia of Amurites
This is a power trio. They have a nice mixture of econ/other, and Kurios are excellent for a teamer, of course. I would be happy to play this trio ourselves, actually. The one thing they're a bit lacking is hammers, but of course that might be compensated by the land or a cash rush civic.
But - they're powerful in three different directions. There's not a tech on the tree they can safely ignore. I expect this to hurt their team dynamics, and potentially cause them to ride madly off in all directions. If they can decide on one to emphasize, with the others as support, then we might need to worry about them. Particularly if they end up emphasizing the Amurites. If they try to research Stirrups, Priesthood, every religion, and Sorcery all at once, then we can safely build past them and crush them at leisure.
To sum up? Flip a coin. They have all the ingredients to win, the question is whether they have the skill to execute.
Here's the group I consider our primary threat. Kyan and plako have both demonstrated solid skill in BtS; Kyan's also been solid in every FFH game he's played, as best I can tell. DaveV is the 'weak' link, with solid FFH knowledge and decent micro skill - just not as much as his competitors. And they're all good posters, willing to explain themselves and learn; I expect them to work well as a team. None of them are perfect, of course, but I think they'll cover each others' gaps pretty well.
The main limit of this group is that I think they're thinking more BtS than FFH. This is exemplified by their picks.
Beeri (Fin, Ind) of Luchuirp Keelyn (Cre, Sum) of Balseraphs Auric (Cha, Arc) of Illians
...verrry interesting...
This is one of the more obvious gameplans - which still could work. Beeri builds Mud Golems and Golden Hammers to give them a rocket start, they tech to Sorcery, and use millions of Ice Elementals to kill us all. With a potential for a backup summon, if the situation calls for it. Gotta say, they've got synergy worked out pretty well here.
They'll be weakened by having no Expansive and no Philo; they ought to be slowed in expansion and eventual max tech pace. Mud Golems do not make up for not being able to boost their # of cities substantially. Arcane and Summoner both have no economic value, essentially, and Cha/Cre aren't exactly power traits themselves. No, Beeri will have to try to carry their economy on his own.
Obviously Arcane Lacuna will be crippling for them, while it lasts. There are some counters, too, although they're not super easy to come by - assassins will hit Puppets instead of Mages, for example. The main thing about summons, in my opinion, is that they depend entirely on getting to critical mass. So we need to have more units than they have summons, and we can crush them through the ice wall. Also, the bone wall, at least, won't work anymore, since puppets don't add to the summon cap. Honestly, we're in pretty decent shape to overcome their numbers, between Warrens and Governor's Manors (and vampire summons, for that matter).
This might very well be the reason I agree to tech Divination. We want Sun mana to make desert barriers to fight on, if at all possible. Granted that they can also use Hosts or Pit Beasts or etc, but Ice Elementals are nasty nasty. Slow is a bit scary, too, especially when it can be cast at such a distance with Puppets. Plus, of course, all the normal spells they can reach.
So how do we handle them? We've got to outdo them at economy. If we've got a solid army of Tier 3 units by the time they start to build mages, or better, slightly before, then we can crush them before seeing a million summons. Ideally, Team Reddit sees the threat too, and does that for us with Warcry, but we can't count on that.
Selrahc Wrote:Eidolons+Paladins have been moved there from Righteousness/Malevolent Designs.
Now that is a tempting target! Have to find Iron first, either by researching Iron Working or Arete + a lotta hammers. But 12 Eidolons and 12 Paladins starts to sound like a pretty good army; especially if we upgrade them from Vampires or Cultists. And - both Elohim and Calabim Pallys/Eidolons can be upgraded from Vamps Ah, that reminds me, I need to test if Elohim Vamps can Feast. And if upgraded vamps keep the ability to Feast, or just the XP gained beforehand.
As a final argument - the path to Fanaticism includes essentially things we wanted anyway: Priesthood, Code of Laws, Philosophy.
A few things have changed since they led their combo to victory - mostly just strengthening a few other potential leaders we should consider, but also significantly weakening Decius of the Calabim. But the most important lessons remain.
Firstly, the Clan are massively overpowered in a teamer. As Amelia mentioned in the end of their thread:
(March 25th, 2013, 04:34)Amelia Wrote: Amurites has saved our lifes quite a lot, so I'm pretty sure that's still a good third. But it's strange how we lost in both of the categories: GNP and Production. I thought our expansion was quite good, but I guess it's nothing compared to Clan Warren Settlers.
The fact is that in a team game, Clan is basically #1. Their major penalties: Research deficit, lack of good late-game units, is pretty much non-existent in a team game where your other two teammates can contribute for you. On the other hand, you have warrened Settlers/Workers/Wolf Riders, which means that your expansion is really fast, you have tons of workers to improve the land ASAP, get up lots of farms while your teammates rush to CoL for that +2 commerce from farms, and you have wolf riders running around defending/harassing everything.
The same applies, to a lesser extent, to the Kuriotates, in that some of their worst penalties are removed by the nature of a team game, but never so much as the Clan. If they don't end up being banned - which seems to be the consensus - we should definitely make sure one of us ends up as Jonas of the Clan.
Secondly, this works out best if we consider ourselves not as 3 civs who happen to be allied, but as three heads of a team. I can't remember where this was mentioned, but its something that PB6 also proved. That means we need to try to avoid thinking about any one civ as "ours" - its still probably best to handle it like that for micro purposes, but we want to be familiar with all the civs, to make sure we're all on the right track. For me, I plan to do a lot of reports as well as trying to be available to chat/chatting about the turns as they come around, especially the later ones. This is something which will pan out later, but it's quite important to keep in mind.
Thirdly, though this isn't covered in that line of posts, we want to try and choose civs with matching or overlapping tech paths. Notice the winners were Clan/Calabim/Elohim - Clan and Calabim have lots of overlap in tech lines (metals), Elohim and Calabim share a long-term research goal (Fanatacism for their heroes, as well as Eidolons/Paladins - which also requires iron) and just generally aren't pulling in different directions (no strong arcane focus, or recon, or mounted, and a spiritual leader that's happy to stay with just the one religion [RoK] for a long time).
Another of the teams, Baxameliknight, ended up with Malakim/Kuriotates/Amurites, a setup which pulls in very different lines, and consequently found themselves having to abandon one (disciples) entirely.
In general, we want to go with civs that fit together well, especially if we end up doing duplicates and getting to choose all three together.
Fourthly, we want a setup of civs which fit a few basic roles - we want a civ with expansive, to build settlers for the team, we want a civ which can focus on teching to feed most of our coins to, and a war civ. This is pretty important, and I should write more on it, but don't have time. This post by Mardoc covers it quite well:
(May 3rd, 2012, 21:17)Mardoc Wrote: So, chatting with Ellimist, he points out that in PBEM18, the Ljo weren't able to Bloom inside Mercurian borders. Kinda/mostly negates that bit of awesomeness. I haven't tested to confirm, but I'm not really sure I need to.
What are some civs that are really good in a teamer?
Expansive category:
Quote:Clan - Warrens! Exp/Spi goes well with warrens, too, for settler and temple spam. Can get around Barb/banned libraries by gifting gold to a tech teammate - get around maintenance by gifting cities. Awesome support civ for any plan - build the cities someone else uses. Assumes limited city gifting is allowed.
Kurios - Big fast, Exp for settler spam, Philo + Enclaves = mucho tech power. Sure, units aren't doubled, but city sizes are :neenernee. And Tailors/Jewelers put the icing on the cake, +2 happy to all allies. Their main limit is irrelevant, since the partners can own all the cities.
Less awesome in a team setting, but still good: Thessa!: Expansive elf forests! Arcane to provide some contribution to war later. Falamar: Extremely map-dependent, but Cove-powered Expansive is pretty awesome when it works. Rhoanna: Again, make gold and cities, feed to someone else. Mahala: Expansive, sure. What else does she bring to the table? Not a whole lot
War category:
Quote:Calabim - Governor's Manors are nice. Vamps are normally a bit nerfed by slow tech pace...well, that's what a good ally is for! Imagine a new Calabim city, founded by a Clan settler, immediately getting a Temple, some soldiers of Kilmorph into its Governor's Manor - it can grow very quickly into a Vamp producing powerhouse. Main downside: quirky tech path. Don't pick them with anyone who also cares about tech path.
Amurites: Yeah, I know you've done them already, by proxy. But Valledia can do insta-mages without even breathing hard! And Govannon can make all the Spiritual Priests into insta-mages too! There's an awful lot of power in the arcane tree, add in Govannon to make things really fun!
She'd go well with Druids, too....
Illians: Ice mana, baby. And Arcane/Cha. Ice elementals are awesome, Ice archmagi are even better. Granted, they don't have a lot of economic power, and they don't get along nicely with sharing BFC's.
Others...many. Most civs could be war civs, really, given the right backing.
Tech civs:
Quote:Amelanchier: Philo, Elf econ, what's not to like? Ok, Raiders is a bit 'meh', but you can't have everything. Millions of cottages, with super high city sizes and libraries and specialists out the wazoo.
Downside, he takes a while to really get going.
Einion: Phi/Cha is a nice early game tech civ. Corlindale is nice too. Might be able to build Warrens, depending on how exactly city gifting works with Tolerant.
Or, any civ with Phi. There's a lot of them. Or the Svarts.
Tech civ's job is simple: built cottages, work cottages, build Academies/Libraries/etc, dump all the commerce through the slider. That can be just about anybody.
Now, granted, these are first thoughts, and likely others will agree with me and take some from us.
But, assuming the elven econ doesn't share, [SIZE="4"]I'm now convinced we'd much rather grab our Expansive civ in the first round[/SIZE]. Which would be, well, probably [SIZE="4"]Jonas as #1, with Cardith as a close #2[/SIZE]. Jonas is just the consummate sprawler, Cardith is better at support. Both civs have extremely good points, balanced out in normal play by pieces that just don't matter in a teamer. We'll find our 3rd choice tech civ a lot closer to our 1st choice, than our 3rd choice Expansive buddy is to Jonas. And, well, war civ - I'm not convinced any is superior - what really matters is the production base and tech base we can put behind it. Which means we pick it last. Sure, we base our tech path around the war civ more than the others, but we can make all sorts of crazy things work out.
Err...assuming we can have one of Jonas or Cardith. I rate the rest of the Expansive leaders about par with each other.
Finally, keeping an eye on overlapping starting techs/mana is something to keep in mind.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
example:
the clan:
build settlers,
explore till i get wolf rider
lurk to enemie territory and try to get a worker or a settler.
(personal evaluation: really good at settlers, not so good late game)
Svartalfar:
get explorers and head straight to enemie territory, and wreack havoc earlygame (perhaps capture a griffon or 2),
meanwhile build settlers to help.
Perhaps if the tech allows it, build a couple of hunters, and evolve to assasins, to keep the presure till we fill ready to start an invasion
(personal evaluation: not so good with settlers, can evolve to good late game, but needs a tech tree quite difficult for the usual civs)
Doviello/Grigori:
build a couple of warriors, and head to enemie territory with lucian and the warriors (change with an adventurer in case its grigori).
those will go on a suicide mission, trying to slow the enemie down).
(personal evaluation: not my first choices to get this going, but doable, the low mobility makes the early lurking quite difficult, but i think you can slow a bit the enemie, grigori is really good late game 2.)
Lastly, Sidar:
Strategie similar to Svartalfar, but more tech dependant.
Anyway those are the civs i thought for exploration, early gorilla warfare and settlers help.
if not i can go with more muscles, or more economic one.
Here I am. I generally use haz01 at hotmail.co.uk, although if you want to gchat I have reallyevilmuffin at gmail.com
A few thoughts:
There definitely are some interesting ideas there. I have the issue of not really knowing how they all meld together too well. But I am a big veteran of BtS teamers on GS. I know all about the IMP settler pump civ allowing the others to cruise it. The game style generally played allows one back player to go eco whilst 2 others engage on fronts. I don't know how useful wonders are in FFH though - on the BtS teamers henge is stupidly powerful at 80 hammers for free monuments in everyones cities for example.
The starting tech thing is interesting - the seafaring civ opened my eyes, as the way it is implemented allows all 3 players to benefit from a tech that only that civ would usually be able to get. Not quite sure if it is worth picking for though. I am unfamiliar with tech paths through the game but understand the idea of keeping everyone on a fairly similar path.
One other thing is that would an elven team to mass produce workers to keep forests on calendar resources be useful? My gut feeling is that it sounds a lot better than it would end up being, but you never know.
I like the idea of the tolerant gifting mechanism - could we theoretically pass the city through all 3 civs on that first turn to open up 3 civs worth of unique buildings to them? If the exp player passed it to the next player who passes it to the end up player on that turn...
There are a lot of things in an always war setting that become irrelevant too. The dark elves seem to have a lot of hidden nat units that would be nerfed a bit.
Based purely from reading the above and what I understand a mix of spi/exp clan, phi/cha elohim and one other civ would be very powerful (assuming the elohim have the ability to build the uniques) Is there any benefit in all being good/evil other than the civic possibilities?
I'm glad you're finding my earlier game to be useful. Do remember that a lot of it depended on the 4-way free for all and the big map. Some of my thoughts won't apply here.
(November 25th, 2014, 16:27)ReallyEvilMuffin Wrote: I like the idea of the tolerant gifting mechanism - could we theoretically pass the city through all 3 civs on that first turn to open up 3 civs worth of unique buildings to them? If the exp player passed it to the next player who passes it to the end up player on that turn...
No, we tested it. Only the first owner of the city matters for the purposes of the buildings available to Elohim in that city. Including - if the Elohim didn't build the city themselves, they can't build their own uniques in it.
Quote:Is there any benefit in all being good/evil other than the civic possibilities?
Paladins can only be built by a good civ, druids by a neutral civ, eidolons by an evil civ. Just about everything else is tied to religion, not alignment - and in fact you can alter your alignment by adopting the right religion.
With BtS experience but not FFH experience, you'll probably find the FFH manual to be useful. Some things have been superceded by EitB, but most are unchanged.
(November 25th, 2014, 16:38)Mardoc Wrote: I'm glad you're finding my earlier game to be useful. Do remember that a lot of it depended on the 4-way free for all and the big map. Some of my thoughts won't apply here.
(November 25th, 2014, 16:27)ReallyEvilMuffin Wrote: I like the idea of the tolerant gifting mechanism - could we theoretically pass the city through all 3 civs on that first turn to open up 3 civs worth of unique buildings to them? If the exp player passed it to the next player who passes it to the end up player on that turn...
No, we tested it. Only the first owner of the city matters for the purposes of the buildings available to Elohim in that city. Including - if the Elohim didn't build the city themselves, they can't build their own uniques in it.
Quote:Is there any benefit in all being good/evil other than the civic possibilities?
Paladins can only be built by a good civ, druids by a neutral civ, eidolons by an evil civ. Just about everything else is tied to religion, not alignment - and in fact you can alter your alignment by adopting the right religion.
With BtS experience but not FFH experience, you'll probably find the FFH manual to be useful. Some things have been superceded by EitB, but most are unchanged.
Thanks. I'm pretty busy with work right through the weekend but I have next week off. I shall delve into it then! Hopefully we will have a little wait for the map so I will get a bit of better understanding.
Fair enough, ignore my elohim comments unless the warrens are that good that they are worth popping in all those cities too.
Can I put this out there that I would like to play the settler popping arm of the trio? Would make sense as I am the less experienced with the ways the game changes so that I have less of an impact on the late wars which will be a bit more complex.
.
.
. That doesn't work.
. So Adventurers are nerfed.
Ah, that reminds me, I need to test if Elohim Vamps can Feast. And if upgraded vamps keep the ability to Feast, or just the XP gained beforehand.
