John, I can't build trolls!

[tobyr]

I'm playing goblins in the fantasy game. I have long since acquired fanatacism, but I cannot build G Trolls, for which fanatacism is the prerequisite. I have just never been given the choice of building a troll! What's going on?

-toby

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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[MGamer07]

Are you in a Fundementelist government (i don't know the fantasy name for it)? If you aren't, you can't build Trolls (Fanatics). But I do remember that in the old civ2 (this may be a bug in the original) that I could make them without a fundementilism. Maybe I just remembered wrong though.

[Xin Yu]

Tobyr: My guess is also that you have not switched to the fundy government which is the only government allows fanatics.

So you are playing the Goblins. It is by far the best civ in the fantasy game. Early fundamentalism is very helpful to expansion since it eliminates happiness problems and there is no waste. For the tech penalty, since you can get several techs from goody huts, it did not hurt you in the early ages. And your domain, the underworld, has tons of shields but lack of trade, it fits the best for fundy. Stygian units cannot be bribed but its cities can, so you can beat them using your money. You'll rule the underworld in no time and build RR there so that your caravans can travel from continent to continent of the surface in one turn (what a nice way to do two-continent trading). The only problem is your limited access to the other two worlds so you cannot have an early world domination. But that is true for any civ except the stygians.

[tobyr]

OK, if I understand correctly, only a fundamenalist goblin government can build trolls? Did I miss something in the manual? How am I supposed to know this?

Of course the civilopedia doesn't explain this, it just says that fanatacism (the advance) is required to build them.

Rules.txt doesn't say this either (I think). Is it that units flag in that says "free support in fundamentalism" that causes a non-fundamentalist government to be unable to build them?

In my current game, I got a big lead in science by popping a lot of huts. Having built far more cities than the other tribes, I am unwilling to give up my science lead, so i did not go to fanatacism, and I'm actually going greatlaw (democracy) soon (maybe around 700, second age). I expect to conquer everyone easily this way, with a big technological edge later.

Xin Yu, I am not yet sufficiently familiar with goblins to see whether they are basically better than stygians, but I shall bow to your superior knowledge for now. The goblins are certainly very EASY to play. City management has never been so easy. I still suspect the stygian's ability to expand onto all maps gives them an edge.

I also think that the AI finds goblins congenial, and plays them rather well; so by playing goblins, I take away the AI's biggest weapon.

- toby

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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[MGamer07]

You're all wrong about the goblins!MERFOLK!!!!!!!! In my game, I conquered the goblins 10 years after I found them (The game was on respawn, so they came back, but since I conquered them so early, so far, they've had the same single city for hundreds of years, with no expansion or armies at all). Also, the Merfolk start out with a great capital, Atlantis, that has large amounts of resources (compared to the other starting places) and I seemed to research faster than anyone else. Also, I have the great wall, marco polo's embassy, and leo's workshop (dont remember fantasy name.

Now, MILITARY! The Merfolk have some of the best military units, since they have access to all the worlds except cloud. And right now, thanks to my tech advances, I have citys on every plane, including in the clouds. I have only 2 Buteo cities that I haven't found yet to conquer, then the buteos are gone. Also, i took over all the goblin and buteo cities over with one unit per city! My only competition is the humans and the elves.


MERFOLK ARE THE BEST!!!!!!!

[Xin Yu]

Tobyr: You may have already found that in the underworld is very easy to defend your cities--when you open a hut in the underworld you never meet a strong barb unit which has move 4, or all as road. You only see the death knights (move 2 and can be bribed).

I have only seen two unique barb units in the underworld so far: one worm and one giant squib(?). The worm cannot be seen from the screen but if it enters your city radius you can see it from the city screen.

Stygian is good since its barrow wright (tough, all as road, all map natural teleport) is the best early unit IMO. But I don't like to play the Stygians. I forget the reason, perhaps because it cannot build caravan (?)?