Terrain in Fantasy

[MissUnleaded]

Please forgive me if this topic has been covered before, but how is one supposed to convert terrain in the fantasy game? When you look in the 'terrain types' section it says that you can convert them (for example, trenches are converted to smokers), but since you never get an advance to turn the settlers into engineers, how is it possible?

[tobyr]

MissUnleaded,
Dwarves are engineers. The first dwarf you bribe gives you the ability to build them.

However, dwarves are a little tricky. They are rather strong units on both offense and defense, they require resource support like engineers, and they have the same ability as other military units to make your cits unhappy. Deciding when to build dwarves rather than settlers is one of the more interesting decisions in the fantasy game, I think. I often use my first dwarf (for a while) to hold strategic territory, either to fend off an early attack or to prevent another civ from expanding too close to me.

(By the way, I changed the merfolk hero into an engineer limited to map 1, because I thought that a limited ability to do serious underwater engneering would make it easier for the merfolk to keep more of their empire underwater.)


- toby



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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[MissUnleaded]

Thanks very much for the info, guys.
As you can tell, I haven't been playing for long.

[The Mad Monk]

I took a slightly different path. I quickly became tired of the fantasy game's crippled engineers, so I built a better one, which I called the Pixie. It is acquired at the same time Fairies are, and have the same capabilities, except that they have engineer abilities instead of spy abilities. They cost eighty shields, which I think give them sufficient balance, and use the Fairy graphics; I used the flag unit to create them.

Personally, I think this makes things more fair for the AI, since they are far more likely to acquire Espionage (which I renamed 'Fairy Lore') then they are to acquire Ally with Dwarves. BTW, have you ever seen the AI bribe a barbarian dwarf? I've never seen them do anything but kill them.