Need advice for fantasy game

[SixArmedMan]

Okay, I really decided to go all out in the fantasy game with the humans. Dealing with anyone on the surface world was easy enough and when i got wizards, I killed off the buteons but how oh how do I get any invasion of the underworld and the seaworld off the god-forsaken ground??? Especially of the sea world? When the best attacking unit you can bring down there is a friggin' siege tower, then you just know things aren't gonna' go down right! Has anybody gotten either invasions off?? If so, how?

[The Mad Monk]

Bribe, bribe, bribe!

You have to bribe a barbarian dwarf to get the dwarf tech, and goblin miners are worth it for the first one. This will get you access to the underworld. If you are fortunate enough to find unoccupied blue rooms and fire chambers, build in them! Settlers work normally in the underworld, once you get them down there--I've had ley line 'subways' running between continents! Getting forces into the underworld, whether goblins are nearby or not, is just sound strategic thinking. I always try to settle the area immediately beneath my surface cities, since it makes it much harder for the goblins to 'sneak attack', as the underworld cities get good shield production, and with enough tunnel entrances, they can effectively share roads.

The sea world is trickier, but bribery is again the key. Bribe any merfolk you can, of whatever ability, and use those units to pop the sea huts. Bribe krakens--barbarian krakens come cheap, and getting one without smashing several ships to flinders is a challenge in and of itself ('kraken hunts'! Gotta love 'em!) Once you have your kraken (a combination of battleship and carrier), load it up with sorcerers, and you're on your way. Once you have one or two sea cities, you can use them to build seige engines, wich do work there.

If that dosen't work for you, build cities on the surface near theirs, and use them as 'air bases' for sorcerers. Fairies and ice drakes work underwater, and can travel freely between the two worlds.

Hope this helps!


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The Mad Monk

"The capacity of a grass leaf to grow from the sheath
at its base is a useful adaptation to herbivore grazing.
It has also resulted, over the eons, in the piteous
spectacle of thousands of hominids vibrating behind
their lawnmowers from spring to fall."

-Someone's AP Biology Textbook

[tobyr]

6am,
Bear in mind that the humans are one of the most difficult tribes to play. Since you have evidently not played the fantasy game very much yet, you will find the goblins or stygians easier to handle.

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[SixArmedMan]

Hmph! I played as the goblins once. It was nothing short of a cake walk. It was still near the beginning when I got fanatacism and mass built trolls. Since I was underground, no one could touch me. It took long and I never finished because I knew I was gonna win. So, I went with humans this time, hoping to be a little more exposed. I got all the key wonders and all like mich's chapel and all the other ones that increase science in one city, so well, I'm not THAT inexperienced with the fantasy game! But thanks for the patronizing attitude!

Hmmm... Bribing mermen... damn. And I just killed off every mermen city on the surface. How do you bribe a kraken? With a diplomat on a ship? I've thought about before with regular civ but knew if it worked or not. Well, I suppose if you can bribe a ship off a coast (?????), then you can bribe a kraken beside your boat. And cities for airbases... Damn! Why didn't I think of that??? It's probably too late now, since sorcerers are too weak. But I'll definately remember that next game.

I settled the underworld with one city, let it languish for 50 so years with an H. warrior, and then it got taken over. That was laziness on my part but also because I didn't really wanna' wage war on two worlds. Settling two worlds seems rather a stretch of the resources is it not?

[Xin Yu]

6am: You put a diplo on ship to birbe a kraken. I checked the event file for barb kraken. There is a random event (1/75 chance each turn?) and a delay of 75 turns before a barb kraken can appear. The event.txt file gives the coordinates (on sea map). Krakens will appear at the first coordinate that is an ocean square. If all of the coordinates are not ocean squares then krakens cannot appear. Krakens will move randomly and pop up to surface, which must be an ocean square as well, every other turn. So you can know where to find them.

Have you defeated a dragon? A kraken can kill a dragon easily. Then you can research the tech and ally with the dragon.

Don't kill the ancient dragon in the underground, it may trigger good or bad events (50/50 chance).

I suggest that you go underground first and bribe some stygian cities. Stygian units are mostly unbribable but their cities are. Stygian skeleton can go to undersea if you use tunnels to get them to the surface first. Barrow wright units can go to all 4 maps and has alpine ability. Those should give you enough forces to explore the undersea map and you may be able to find a tribe there as a base. Defend your cities carefully in undersea since the barbs are tough.

[SixArmedMan]

Hm, is there a difference between barbarians created by events.txt and those that appear from nowhere to harass your cities? The ones that pop up from huts usually disappear after a turn or two if they can't find their way, I know but what about others? If a barbarian is created from an events.txt like the kraken, then what? Does it float around for a couple of turns then disappear or does it just move in random directions until it encounters something to kill?

On another note, it's kinda' late in my game now and lots of tribes have I Viking (I swear, the computer cheats!). Dragons can't go underwater and I'm still a little far from Ice drakes. What unit's best for attacking mermen cities undersea? Aren't barrow wights a little weak by this time? And aren't siege towers too vulnerable to do this solo?

[The Mad Monk]

AFAIK, the barbarians from the events file are the 'random' barbs. As you already know, if a barb wanders into territory you've explored, the game will let you see them, whether you have any units nearby or not. Because of this, you can easily spot a 'spawn point' if it lies in explored territory (In TOT, at least, the only things that will prevent a spawn point from being re-used is putting a unit right on top of it, or putting a city radius over it). Just put skalds near these points.

Krakens are a special case because they always spwan on the sea map, which is usually pretty black to the human player. I usually hunt krakens using a dragon boat with a skald paired with a shield boat (to act as a spotter). The trick is to use the shield boat to uncover the unexplored regions the kraken dives into, while making sure both vessels end up out of its LOS (and, preferably, its move). Once the kraken is both on the surface and in range of the dragon boat, you go in for the 'kill'. This is a fun game in and of itself...

Oh yeah, event-spawned barbs are forever.

An added bonus: while wizards and dragons won't go underwater on their own, they will if they're riding a kraken's back!

As for the underworld colonies being a waste...in a word, no. Look at the ice caves, to start: two food, one shield--except for the lack of trade, its prime grassland. The blue rooms are the same way, only with two shields. Both can be irrigated, and blues can be mined (+1); think about that--a mined blue is like a mined hill, except that since it also produces two food, it is also self-supporting. Blue rooms make me very happy. Think of all the troops you could build and support with that! Don't forget, if there are trade-producing specials, roads will have their normal effect.

Bribe, then build, dwarves; they turn bedrock into tunnels, and tunnels into blue rooms.

What's the best unit for attacking undersea cities? Why, dragons, of course!

edit; spell check...that will teach me to post in a haze at 4 AM.
[This message has been edited by The Mad Monk (edited May 04, 2000).]

[Lucky Luke]

quote: Originally posted by The Mad Monk on 05-04-2000 04:17 AM An added bonus: while wizards and dragons won't go underwater on their own, they will if they're riding a kraken's back! [This message has been edited by The Mad Monk (edited May 04, 2000).]

Dragons that are riding on a Kraken's back ??? That would have made my day ... Bribing a merfolk's kraken is easy enough (if you can spare the cash) but I've always preferred to finish them off (with Dragons of course). What a mistake ...

[tobyr]

6arm,
My apologies for sounding patronizing.

In the discussion on bribing Krakens, no one seems to have mentioned that a land-based diplo can do it. If the kraken is next to land, just walk up and bribe it!

The way I save money to bribe a kraken early, is to build (and then sell) city walls.

Surely it's a bug that the kraken can take dragons undersea? (The dragons can then fly off underwater and go on both land and sea on map 1.) Dragons are clearly not allowed on map 1 in rules.txt.

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[Xin Yu]

quote: Originally posted by tobyr on 05-04-2000 10:42 AM Surely it's a bug that the kraken can take dragons undersea? (The dragons can then fly off underwater and go on both land and sea on map 1.) Dragons are clearly not allowed on map 1 in rules.txt. - toby

There are two possibilities.
First, a unit can live in map 1 but cannot natually transport to that map from map 0(must rely on something else to get it there). In such a case if you have a map 1 city you can produce such a unit (it is not true for dragon but maybe true for other units).
Second, the game did not check if a kraken (carrier type) carries units when it natually transports to another map. (They checked for transports, but maybe forgot to check carriers.) We can test it by giving the carrier unit of the extended game a natual transport ability and see if planes and missiles can move with it. Test for subs as well.

[SixArmedMan]

There must be SOME difficulty in bribing a kraken somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It must be near a 50/50 chance that you'll either encounter it first so you can bribe it or it'll encountere your ship first and blow it to pieces. And how often do krakens spawn and when do they first start appearing? I can imagine that'd you would just send your ships in pairs I guess but that seems a little too time consuming. But, when you're stuck with no choices then... what better alternative is there?

Reading the TOT poster, It says dragon lore is obtainable by quest only, yet I stole it from the stygians. Is this a bug?

[Xin Yu]

6am: Siege Engine is the way to go. Siege Engines can be put on top of a square next to a Merfolk city, submerge, then attack. If you have a large force you should be able to take the city and fortify it with sorcerors immediately. If you have a couple of merfolk settlers to build fortress for the Engines they won't get stack-killed. As for the underground, build tunnels next to a city and attack as soon as the tunnel is ready. Or if you can build laylines you can roll your siege engines along them to attack.

The problem is that you may end up destroying cities instead of capturing them.

I haven't tried to steal the dragon lore before since I was always the one who beat the dragon.
[This message has been edited by Xin Yu (edited May 04, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Xin Yu (edited May 04, 2000).]

[tobyr]

Of course you can get dragon lore from another civ if they get it first, and they may, if barb dragons just never come your way. I've tried TRADING knowledge for it, but no tribe has ever seemed interested.

I think we already know that once a unit gets on a map where it doesn't belong, it exists there very happily. The developers of ToT would have rendered many bugs uninteresting if they had been careful to kill units that are on illegal maps, say, whenerv you try to use them.

So the compounding bug in this case is probably that the dragon was not checked when the kraken submerged. But it is quite common for a boat to lose its native transport ability if it is carrying a unit that cannot go with it; what is the difference here?

The fantasy game events file generates barb krakens every 75 turns or so. But if all ten locations happen to be land, I think they will fail to show up. I have played many games with no barb krakens, and I played one with three (they just killed me, even though I managed to bribe two of them after they did much damage). It's a good idea to be ready for them.

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[The Mad Monk]

That's probably the case, but since I started my last fantasy game before I loaded the patch, I don't know if the patch covered it or not. The discovery was entirely accidental--I had loaded a badly damaged dragon onto a nearby kraken for protection, set it to sleep, and promptly forgot about it. Later, when I sent this kraken on a raiding mission on several merfolk outposts, the dragon woke up. I was getting frustrated with the merfolk at this point, so I went with it. Grinning all the way.

[The Mad Monk]

quote: Bribing a merfolk's kraken is easy enough (if you can spare the cash)

I've never bribed a merfolk kraken--in fact, I don't think I've ever seen a merfolk kraken. The great thing about barb krakens is that they appear long before the merfolk can even research the required tech, so you can have one (or several) before the merfolk even have a shot at them. Because of this, the merfolk generally don't have any coastal cities by the time they can build one!

Tobyr, your'e right, you can use land-based skalds, and I have, at times. Like when a kraken decides to park itself in a land-locked puddle. The main reason I stick to ships is that on land, you have to trust the buggers to actually hit land, within one non-difficult square of the skald.

quote: The way I save money to bribe a kraken early, is to build (and then sell) city walls.

You do that too? I like to call it 'low-tech capitalization', since it has the same 1:1 shield-to-gold ratio. I often do that without a pressing reason, if I have a city that won't produce a lot of trade but will produce a lot of shields, and I don't have anything else for it to build. I generally use barracks for this purpose.