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Post by Boony on Jan 23, 2009 13:12:48 GMT
I'm playing it on a laptop with a 32mb on(mother)board graphics card. In that case I guess my onboard 128k graphics should be ok then. 128k? I think my mobile has better graphics than that...
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Post by coffers on Jan 23, 2009 13:36:15 GMT
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Post by hornet on Jan 23, 2009 13:45:15 GMT
Yeah, that's a nice little pack. I grabbed it for about £7 off Amazon last summer.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 23, 2009 14:27:57 GMT
And FFH2 is free, if you want that. You just need CivIV and BTS to make it work.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 23, 2009 17:39:43 GMT
So now my question is what to do next. I'm looking at my fleet of ships and thinking that what would be really clever would be to pack everyone up and then swing around to the north east of the island and mount another amphibious attack there.
If I capture the ugly Orc-infested north east town, (we'll call it Jesmond), then the Orcs will be faced with a choice to move south and try to recapture one of the first towns we've taken, which will confirm they lose Jesmond or to abandon attempts to recapture the south and try to stop us from taking Jesmond, giving us a harder fight in the north, but considerably more time to consolidate our gains in the south.
Ideally I'd like to bring some more units over, but all of the cities on Awesome are in the midst of long production runs that can't be interrupted to produce military units and I don't want to thin the defence of my home island by taking units that have already been constructed.
This means I'll have to produce anything I want to fight with on Clan island and that means two things; firstly the built units will have limited capability because of lowered tech and resources in newly capture towns. I'll probably be limited to warriors. Secondly, the warrior units conscripted there will have a very high Clan composition and I could have problems getting them to fight their cousins. A unit defecting at the wrong time could be very dangerous.
This pushes me toward a less sweeping and more conventional maneuvre, sending my main army up the coast road to hit the town in the north west. This will allow me to break up any Orc attacks that are moving south before they hit my towns, but it won't force any strategic decisions upon the Orcs. They'll send everything they have south with the idea that either it'll blunt my attack moving north, or it'll break my attack and allow them to move on the southern towns.
A compromise solution would be to wait a few turns with my main army in the south towns and the ships ready. The wait will allow the Clan to build their defences a little, but it'll also allow time for the cities and, therfore, their conscripts, to move a little closer to balance between Clan and Elven population.
I could start churning out Warriors until I have six, three in each town and then board my main army and move on Jesmond. If I keep production going in the south until I have 10 warriors, I could keep three in each city with a Corps of four to the north at a natural defensive point in case the Orcs come south.
If the attack on Jesmond pulls the main Orc force to the north east then I can move those four Warriors, along with maybe a Champion and a cavalry unit if I can rush produce them somehow on Awesome along with a cargo ship to move them over and then send those six units to hit the town of ugly inbred Orcish buffoons in the east. Or to give it its new name; Norwich.
There. In best consultant tradition I've come up with three semi=plausible solutions without having any further idea about what to actually do.
Where's my massive cheque?
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Post by coffers on Jan 24, 2009 0:57:44 GMT
You can't have a cheque, you clearly came up with those ideas on your own, you didn't steal them from anyone else.
Consulatnts only get cheques for stuff that isn't thier own work.
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Post by Moo on Jan 26, 2009 8:51:57 GMT
Good point, Coffers.
s1ut - :moose:
In other news, isn't Norwich in the East? I know that kinda disrupts the flow of your story, but, well, y'know, we can't have technical innacuracies in stories, can we? Krakatoa, East of Java excepted, natch.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 26, 2009 11:42:56 GMT
I said east.
:nark:
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Post by Moo on Jan 26, 2009 12:15:32 GMT
Sure. Still, you're doing very well and I'm sure nothing can go wrong™.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 26, 2009 16:34:16 GMT
For a short while after the capture of Lakis there was a pause in the fight for the Clan Island as both sides took a breath and tried to reorder and resupply their armies. It appeared that the Clan had given up on their two former towns, but I couldn't just settle for them. In my mind it you lived on an island it was important that you owned all of it, or you really didn't own any of it.
The army that Valin Phanuel had led ashore two years ago was weaker now than then due to the loses just after the capture of Garduk, but the forces it did have were more experienced, so I felt comfortable at least driving toward the enemy, even if I didn't push on and assault any towns. With one large army to capture the rest of the cities on the island mobility would be a key, so as the cities back on my home island completed production cycles I set them to raise Nyxkin cavalry which would be shipped over en masse to add a fairly strong, wide-ranging punch to the Phanuel's force.
About now conscripted warrior units were appearing in Garduk and Lakis and so I considered pushing Phanuel's army out into the fog to see what I could see. I peeled off one swordsman unit and one champion unit to bolster the defences in our two captured towns and sent Phanuel's further weakened army toward a ridge north east of Garduk.
When he got there, our decision about whether to push straight north overland or load onto ships and hook around to the far north east once our army was freed for operation was made for us.
Cresting the ridge and gaining an extended view of the interior of the island from his high vantage point, Phanuel saw row after row after row of mines, all buzzing with activity. Clearly this was the economical heartland of the Clan empire and removing it from Clan control would neuter either their finances or their scientific research, depending on what they were doing with the metal that came out of the ground here.
We wasted no time in sending in an attack against the mid-sized town that was surrounded by the fields of mining, Valin Phanuel slicing through the bulk of the defence, leaving the weaker units to either be trampled underfoot of the Nyxkin mountain lions or struck down by our adepts fireballs. We took the town quickly, but the Phanuel's force wasn't exactly built for defence, so for the first time instead of capturing a town, we burned it to the ground. All of the production from the mines would be still lost to the Clan, but we wouldn't be trapped in an angry city in the middle of enemy territory.
Phanuel withdrew to the high ground north east of our Garduk again and waited.
He wasn't there for long when the Clan reappeared in the plains below him, picking between the now quieted mines to the flat space that used to contain his city. At first it was just a couple of Clan axmen units and so Phanuel was told to hold position and then a larger Clan force appeared, escorting a settler to rebuild the town and a worker to repair anything that might be broken.
The appearance of this force was the signal to Phanuel to go onto the offensive again and he swept down from the hills, brushed aside the Clan escort and captured the worker, who was sent back to Garduk to toil for us.
The Clan settler had managed to run past us and put down a few tents on the site of the old city, but our army circled around finishing off the stragglers from the Clan force and then burned down the new settlement before returning to their hill, overlooking the plains again.
At this point our Frigates in the waters off the east coast of the island told us that they saw a strong force leave the city we called "Norwich", headed inland, presumably in an attempt to rebuild the mining town again.
This is what we had been hoping for as the Clan's infantry would take four turns reach the middle, while we could strike the other way in just two and so after allowing the Clan to move away from the city Phanuel lead his Nyxkin east, with the Adept and Confessor following as fast as they could. They found Norwich virtually undefended now and with the Frigates bombarding away any defensive advantage the walls may have given to the city, Phanuel raised the Elven flag over the rooftops in just one turn.
We had our third city and, better yet, our second fleet had just broken the coastal waters of the Island of Awesome on their way to Clan Island with five Nyxkin cavalry lances and a company of Crusader infantry onboard, a force that would join with Phanuel to make for the biggest army the Elves had ever put on the field - an army who would hopefully overwhelm the rest of the Clan for a quick victory.
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Post by Boony on Jan 26, 2009 16:44:58 GMT
Looks like taking this island isn't giving you too many problems after the initial visit. Are you keeping enough defence on the Island of Awesome in case anyone decides to cut off your capital? How's the research going? How intelligent are your guys? Are you pushing towards any major scientific breakthroughs, or are you just a brutal warmongering civilisation?
I still haven't got my head around playing any Civ games yet, but I still feel it's one game I should get my teeth into at some point. The DS version is supposed to be great/average, depending on reviews.
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Post by hornet on Jan 26, 2009 17:15:01 GMT
At this point our Frigates in the waters off the east coast of the island told us that they saw a strong force leave the city we called "Norwich", headed inland, presumably in an attempt to rebuild the mining town again. "They all said I was daft to build a city surrounded by rampaging enemy cavalry, but I built it just the same. It got burned down by rampaging enemy cavalry. So I built another. It got burned down by rampaging enemy cavalry again. The third city got our capital captured, got burned down by rampaging enemy cavalry, then sank into the swamp. I didn't even know that there were swamps in the middle of mining country."
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 26, 2009 17:34:11 GMT
Looks like taking this island isn't giving you too many problems after the initial visit. Are you keeping enough defence on the Island of Awesome in case anyone decides to cut off your capital? How's the research going? How intelligent are your guys? Are you pushing towards any major scientific breakthroughs, or are you just a brutal warmongering civilisation? I still haven't got my head around playing any Civ games yet, but I still feel it's one game I should get my teeth into at some point. The DS version is supposed to be great/average, depending on reviews. Right now the mobility is killing the Clan. Normally I wouldn't be as aggressive, but after a 400+ turn war with the Clan last game, I'm keen to rub their faces into the dirt, so I'm putting together the biggest army I can and doing the Hulk smash! thing. Combined with a collection of units who can move three times more quickly than the clan forces they're facing, it makes for a very long day for the Clan. They can't just let me tramp about as I want, but every time they respond to it, they open another opportunity to me. In normal circumstances I might not recognise the opportunity existed, but I have small naval forces off of every coastal town, so if they make a move I know about it as soon as it happens. The only thing that hasn't happened yet is that I haven’t revealed the capital. I know where it is, because the unexplored land is about the right size for a city meaning it has to be there, but I don't know what sort of defences I'm going to see. This fogging is what's defending my homeland too. I plonked a couple of new cities in the north and north east of Awesome island (so east and then further east of my capital) and their founding has closed the last two gaps in my borders. The only way to cross borders in this game is to be at war with someone, or to be an undeclared unit like a Privateer or an Assassin. However I have my own fleet of Privateers who were out gaining experience before anyone else, which means they're tough and every time I see a new ship of any stripe, declared or undeclared, I go and sink it if I can to stop reconnaissance as much as possible. I've also steadfastly refused to trade World Maps with anyone, meaning that there's no one out there who's knows exactly what the layout of the interior of my island looks like. There have been a couple of Kuriotate Caravels show up off the coast and I'm sure the Kuriotates have traded world maps, but that only means that people have a rough idea about my coastline. I don't think there's anyone out there right now who's keen enough to start a war with me to find out what's going on in the middle of our island, so for now I'm hoping that our mystery will keep us safe. As for what we’re doing, we’re trying to keep our troop numbers low to keep our costs low so that I can keep ploughing into research. I think we’re the most technically advanced race, but at the same time we’re nowhere near the strongest race, because we haven’t turned any of our tech into tons of units on the ground. I’m hoping that if someone does land someone on Awesome Island, they do so in such a way that I can slow them down with what I’ve got and switch all the cities to unit building and just crank out materiel until the problem goes away. It’s very Russia, circa 1938. Except that I haven’t shot all my own commanders. Right now we’re about half way to Mithril Weapons, which are the nukes of FFH. Your guys start off with stone weapons, then bronze, then iron, steel and finally Mithril, with the idea that this unbreakable, undullable metal will cleave through shields, armour and then still be sharp enough to cut your lunch. We also have gunpowder researched, which once the mines go up to collect it means we can put Man O’ War to sea, but there won’t be many of them for a while because once we capture large Clan towns which are producing nothing because they’re still being subdued, our economy is going to tank. My main focus right now is just getting all of this done while the Kuriotates are still squabbling with the Dwarves who live next door, because if those two manage to untangle themselves from their border war with some sort of agreement that suits both then I would by completely and totally unsurprised if either or both had a pop at me.
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Post by coffers on Jan 26, 2009 17:44:32 GMT
Nicely done again.
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Post by Narcizo on Jan 26, 2009 20:26:45 GMT
Thanks for getting me started playing Civ 3 again, yeh bostord. Mrs Nark, in particular, would like to extend her thanks.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 26, 2009 20:34:36 GMT
Civ IV > 3. And you're welcome, Blobmother.
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Post by elth on Jan 26, 2009 23:39:36 GMT
The DS version is supposed to be great/average, depending on reviews. I like it, but it's unmistakably Civ-lite. And it's even harsher on starting position, given you only really get enough space to build 4 or 5 cities and if someone cuts off your expansion, you're stuck. Still, you can play start to finish in two and a half hours so it's a nice little time waster.
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Post by Moo on Jan 27, 2009 9:06:09 GMT
Elth - would it be a good game for someone like me or Boony that hasn't played any Civ type games before?
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Post by Moo on Jan 27, 2009 9:06:39 GMT
Oh and a huge :thumb: to s1ut for the progress. Very interesting read.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 27, 2009 14:58:21 GMT
With the capture of Norwich, the south of the Clan island was now subdued. Although there would be sporadic fighting over the razed mining town in the heartland, the Clan had apparently almost conceded defeat. I say almost, because two catapults appeared from the mist around what was certainly their capital and took a position on a hill to the south, presumably waiting for infantry support.
This was a crazy move because of that mobility advantage I may have mentioned and Valin Phanuel and our comapny of Nyxkin cavalry rode out of Norwich and destroyed both of the catapults without loss of a man - the big seige engines no match for our nimble riders.
On the turn back to Noriwch they noticed another force heading for the mining area, but it was tiny this time, just two Axmen and a Settler and they were run down without incident.
At this point the Clan leader appeared, asking for a truce, trying to save his remaining three cities. He offered some gold as a tribute and even was prepared to accept becoming a Vassal state under our control, but with the memory of the last game still heavy, that was never going to fly.
I offered him a cease fire, rather than a peace accord and told him that he could buy the cease fire by giving me all of his cities bar his capital. Unsurprisingly he declined.
As he returned to his capital the ships of our second fleet landed in Garduk, bringing with them the five Nyxkin units and a company of Crusaders from the I.o.A. They formed and struck out north up the coast road from Garduk, while Valin Phanuel took his Nyxkin and the Confessor and Adept from Norwich, leaving behind a company of Swordsmen and some warriors to look after the city and he rode west-north-west to meet up with our newly landed troops.
They combined on the plains near the ruined mining city and then headed northeast into the small unseen area of the island made camp on a wooded hill and looked down to the capital of the Clan for the first time.
The city of Braduk smouldered, shrouded in smoke. At its heart you could see yellow flames lick up casting an eerie glow on the place. To the untrained eye it looked like it had been recently conquered, but in fact this was the point where the Goddess Bhaal had struck the earth, driving through a hole all the way to the hell she now ruled.
Before the fall Braduk had been the capital of the holy Knights of the Bannor civilisation, but now it was home to the ugly Orcs and goblins freed that day.
Striking out at other towns - Jesmond to the north east, or Renegade Hill to the north west would make more sense, to lessen the forces the Clan would have here, but seeing Braduk for the first time the place became irresistable, as an opportunity to cut what was left of the Clan in two and potentially end their Civilisation if they crumbled after the loss of their capital.
Braduk's inland position meant that for the first time here our navy would not be able to help with a direct bombardment of the walls, althoug their positions off the coast of the other two cities would let me know if reinforcements were sent south.
I lined up my army for attack and had the Confessor walk the ranks blessing the swords of the troops. Behind him came the Adept who, in an attempt to play both sides, cursed all of the blades with a poison enchantment.
Looking along the line it was important that we find someone to launch the first attack against the strongest defence and it was at this point I notice a group of guys shuffling nervously on the end. Valin Phanuel and our Swordsmen and Crusaders all wore shining armour and carried large shields. Our Nyxkin eschewed the metal armour and shields for colourful leather armour designed to give them mobility as they clung to the back of their feline mounts. Then at the end were a bunch of guy wearing sandals and togas, looking like a collection of drunken college students.
They were the warriors from Norwich who were distinctly told to stay at home, but at come along anyway. According to our field commanders, they had a <5% chance of success in storming the walls and a <8% chance of esacaping.
Perfect.
I had Valin ride past all of our heavily armoured assault troops, point to the guys with bronze clubs and felt hats and tell them to get on with it.
As it turned out, those guys had covered themselves in rabbits feet, bought pegs off of the Norwich gypsies and brought along a guy with two rocks to beat out lucky music, because they actually won.
Ok, so most of them died, but they took down a whole unit of Clan axmen with them, who probably died of disbelief.
As a reward, I sent the warriors in again and while their luck didn't hold twice, at least it'll make a stirring story for my letters home to their families.
With their top unit gone and their second unit slightly wounded, the Orcs closed ranks on their now damaged city walls and looked out over an army that stretched almost from horizon to horizon.
They got the best view in the house as this tide of horses, lions and Elves fell on them and they'll have grand tales to tell in the afterlife of how their capital fell in a day.
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Post by Moo on Jan 27, 2009 15:50:08 GMT
This game seems very easy. Have you tried a non-poofy level?
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Post by coffers on Jan 27, 2009 16:17:14 GMT
Moo's comment surpasses the action of the heroic Elves in one fell swoop.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 27, 2009 16:58:48 GMT
This game seems very easy. Have you tried a non-poofy level? Civ is a very easy game. Provided you're the bully. As a game it's a big proponent of technology and the tipping point and you saw in my last game that once you cross the tipping point in the wrong direction, there's really no way back. Vanilla Civ has always been strong in not letting you off the hook, but FFH is even more so as the AI is aggressive and if it smells blood it will grind you into the dirt. Then you mix in the bully aspect, which affects island-based civs in particular. You can be quite happily tooling along in your isolationist bliss with no other civs on your borders and you feel like you're doing well and maintaining a good pace when suddenly your archers run back from the coast to tell you someone showed up in a nuclear submarine. If you have borders with another viable civ then you tend to slow each other down a little by getting in each other's way, but you also force each other to keep up a breakneck rate of technological expansion because you can see "over the fence" and watch the guy next door break out iron weapons whereas you're still using bronze, for example. Being on an island works in reverse, in that it frees you from concern about neighbours because one I smashed the Elohim, (and the Clan beat out the Illian), you have the whole place to yourself. There's no evolutionary pressure any more because you are the apex predator. However, you've also no way to measure your progress which can lead to some really nasty surprises if you allow your space and comfort to turn into complacency. The war with the clan on Clan island was over the moment I captured and held Garduk in much the same way that the Overlord invasions were over once the Allies got off the beaches. I am technically superior to the Clan in just about every facet and so the only chance they had was to not let me ashore. Once the feint I pulled in the first action was successful, earning me both a vaiable base of operations and a point from which to stockpile logistics to cover for the disadvantage I have of being a 10+ turn from my home base of operations, it was a matter of when I was going to win the war, not if. At least it was provided I didn't make any glaring mistakes and none of the other bigboy civs attacked me. Right now the surviving Civs as far as I can ascertain are Us, The Kuriotates, the Khazad, the Malakim, the Hippus, the Amurites and the Calabim. The Clan are about to be wiped out and already gone are the Elohim, the Illian and the Lanun. So what's been happening so far and will for another couple hundred turns is the distilling of the Civs down from everyone, to the people who are going to have a proper barney at the end. The Kuriotates are stuck in perpetual border skirmishes with the Khazad and their border towns have changed hands so many times they don't even bother changing the flags now. They just leave both running. The Malakim are fourth behind Us, the Kuriotates and the Khazad, but they have finally won their border wars with the Calabim vampires in the south and the Amurites in the north, meaning that I expect them to go on a technological leap now to move at least into second place. Barring bizarre circumstances, from these four empires is going to come the final three who stab each other in the face for the final plate of cupcakes. Whoever wins the spat between the Kuriotates and Khazad, (probably the former) is going to win the right to eat the Hippus for breakfast, while the Malakim are going to devour the Amurites and the Calabim and then I expect the Malakim and Kuriotates to finish off the Khazad. If all goes to plan, this is the point where I'll be losing as once I win the war on the Clan island I'll have reached the limit of my natural expansion due to the fact that my empire is islands all the way down. anything else I want I'm going to have to take from the big civs and they won't be so accomodating as the Clan when I land on their shores. So my task after I wipe out the clan will be to start engineering diplomatic ties with the right people so that I can elongate the whittling down process of the other Civs. If I can trade the right tech to a small civ to make it a perpetual thorn in the side of a big one, that'll be a win for me. If I can make the big civs fight eachother before the little civs are finished off, that'll be a win for me. The problem at that will be that if I make a mistake then, then I'll end up with a faceful of angry, powerful civs who've come to break all my stuff and won't stop until I'm dead. Which will coincide with the point where you start enjoying the thread again.
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Post by elth on Jan 27, 2009 17:35:36 GMT
I'm positively giddy with anticipation!
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 27, 2009 22:12:28 GMT
Going to France has made you all sarcastic eith.
They won't let you take that back to Australia you know.
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