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Denmark is fun with the early 3 move Berserkers (pretty insane with the mod, but even very strong without) Assyria (if bnw civs are okay) for me since they’re getting some changes I want to try in the next patch, which should be coming today going by the posts in that topic. Also please indicate if you want to try the succession game and we can discuss some rules/difficulty/civ/etc, I'm flexible.

It's more like we take turns playing the same game. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=456545 Probably ~20 turns each the first 100 turns. Then ~15 turns each for 100-200. Do a small writeup after each section and pass on the save file. Usually learn a good bit about the game in discussing strategies, why people made certain decisions, etc.

Some things to note (that may not be immediately obvious) if you want to try the mod. Read the changelog for more details. -v4 seems to be coming out soon, with some tweaks. Should be today iirc, if you want to wait a bit. -Some civs like China/Zulu are weaker than normal, since Pikes got moved (Civil Service too strong a tech otherwise) and xbows are -2 ranged strength (with longsword buffs and how combat strength ratios work, CKN do a lot less damage). Some like Rome are stronger than normal (Swordsman are generally pretty terrifying, and Legions moreso) -Melee units should usually be the core of the army. Ranged is for more damage. Mounted add some damage and utility use (pillage, snipe workers/generals, add flanking). Siege against cities, but imo they still aren’t that useful until artillery. Mass composites/Xbows can still work, but the timing is stricter. - >4 cities is a bit easier/stronger, <4 cities is a bit weaker. It’s a very good idea to conquer cities at some point. Turtling (the whole game) usually doesn’t work. - AI is considerably more aggressive, especially for cases like land disputes and against CS. Build some defense (some units, cities are pretty weak). Warmonger penalty is tweaked so there’s casus belli and such. - Tradition/Liberty/Honor are fine starting trees. I wouldn’t start with Piety alone (it works but it’s just harder), either do a mix or take it later as a secondary tree. Rationalism is industrial now, so no point timing Renaissance. - I’d recommend 1-2 levels below your normal difficulty, depending on how comfortable you are with your Civ fundamentals (understanding what’s “good” in a general sense, and why, plus how fast you can adapt to the tweaks). There’s also a lot more small things that end up mattering, especially at Immortal+. tbh I don’t know the optimal decisions either. -I would say the main appeal is the challenge and diversity, while still feeling like CiV (unlike CBP, imo). So it’s more if you’re bored of Tradition->Secularism and the quirks of regular BNW AI (everyone with Cultural grand strategy focus. Can’t move and shoot. Very peaceful. Doesn’t win until turn 300+. etcetc). If you don’t feel that way, fair enough. Also, figure I’d ask, any interest in doing a succession game/tag team? I’m always interested in different thought patterns and approaches to certain situations. and wacky things can happen when playstyles clash

Sounds good

Eh, we can maybe start the draft soon-ish and people can sub in if they wish during the process. I did glimpse a lurker or two itt so maybe they might chime in. and imo the mod is actually good for teaching you how to build a strong empire. Because otherwise in deity you can mess around forever, with relatively little optimization, and stumble into victories as long as you bribe AIs. I still lose demigod games (not just backstab games either, even though those happen) or have very tight races to the last turn, whereas regular deity is a sleepwalk (AI is like 50-100+ turns away from victory). @HF Makalov Fanboy Kai: cool if it works, np

It's usually in Documents->My Games->Sid Meier's Civilization 5 (at least on windows) but it depends on your computer. I should clarify that the mod uses a dll so not all the changes will work on Mac/Linux, if that's applicable. I suppose there's also no problem with some people using the mod and others not. Mainly just comparing experiences.

Delete the "cache" and "ModUserData" folders in where your Civ folder is (usually in My Documents) and restart Civ. Then just select this 1 mod (if we choose to use it). That's always worked for me.

Ah, Civ's the only game I've played lately so I'm in. Recently I've been playing Acken's mod which is considerably more challenging than the base game, in large part due to AI (which is quite impressive). It's not very different from the vanilla game in policies/units, but far better balanced, and requires much "better" play overall. Vanilla deity is probably comparable to modded Emperor, with similar or less bonuses at equivalent levels (less starting tech handicap). I play demigod mostly. Anyways, just wanted to bring it up because AI that can't even move and shoot is just silly in case we want to try it. Regular BNW is okay too.

Right, the Dragonstone usually doesn’t ohko (without attack stance) and usually does 2hko without much help, so mag the stat doesn’t matter too much (if not really low). I think it’s more useful so that Kanna can use Levin Swords and such better. I do think [child + variable parent]/2 is a reasonable approximation from your calculations and my own experiences. As you’ve noted, there are some small discrepancies. But still, a good estimate. There’s probably some good 3rd gen options; I admit they didn’t come to mind for me. Ah thanks. That probably explains why I don’t remember having it in that playthrough. I did know it was obtainable somewhere in Nohr.

Re: Pair ups and guard stancing: Whoever is fighting enemy phase probably wants to be in Guard Stance, since negating attack stance (which the enemy is typically well-placed for and aggros in a pattern plus specifically moves for) and having Dual Guard after 5 attacks (misses and enemy strikes count) mitigates so much damage. I think it’s slightly stronger to have a single Guard Stance pair on each front and everyone else for attack stance to clean up stuff player phase. Having people unpaired is also a lot more flexible mobility wise, and still gives the option to Pair if some str/mag/spd situationally pushes a unit over a benchmark for a certain enemy. Generally a single pair can’t reliably oneround everything (except Corrin sometimes, Ryoma midgame, and Xander with all the Spd boosts midgame), so more combat units can help. There were definitely some cases where I felt pairing up every unit simply didn’t give enough offense to kill enemies in time. Especially relevant for giving a bow/beastkiller/hammer user more effective attacks, for example. Also there were cases where I transferred around units to barely have enough stats to kill a certain enemy (units in Guard Stance, with their boosted stats, can still participate as the support unit in Attack stance, if the main unit is unpaired. What a mouthful). Aura/adjacent skills don't work in the back of guard stance either. Using both stances is easier and more efficient, even if more complex to think through. Because the Pair Up bonuses don’t scale with stats anymore, anyone can be a good support unit there. Harold is nice for Effie since he helps trigger her personal and with the pairup Str boost on top, allows ohkos sometimes. Though I like Silas sometimes for her since he gives defense and mobility and some Str. Charlotte gives great offensive bonuses and heroes give Spd/Def which are probably the most important stats. So yeah they’re all good to have there. Sure if conservative and turtling it’s fine to Guard stance all the time, but you do lose a lot of damage. However, Attack stance is sometimes overkill damage too (honestly the game could be even harder to necessitate even more precise positioning, but I imagine the audience for that is small. >_>). So a mix is better to optimize killing enemies; again this matters outside a turncount context as well, if swarmed and needed to protect squishes/certain tiles (most obvious example is N10 after turn 7, but there are others). Enemies hit hard enough that can’t always hide them behind other combat units. Relatively few units are tanky, even with guard stance. Re: Mages. Corrin is the best and I do think it’s his/her best build in Hoshido and perhaps IK (perhaps even without +Mag). I currently find Corrin more useful as a speedy swordman in Nohr but it’s not like a mage build won’t work. However, I will note that I thought +Mag/-Res had kinda borderline speed when I played Nohr hard (though I think I must have skimmed over Horse God or something, because I don’t remember using it there). Foleo/Ophelia/even Kanna are pretty useful but if discounting children, the other mages you kinda have to live with their quirks, such as Orochi’s Spd or Tsukuyomi’s bases (he’s okay in Invisible Kingdom). Odin/Nyx also have mediocre bases/growths. Elise/Sakura/Felicia are all decent, but you have to deal with their durability and tome rank (and levels without magic access). Dark Falcon helps everyone a lot, and gives the option of early magical Saizou as well. Re: Corrin’s spouse The main things to consider are: -The S rank pair up bonuses give an extra point or 2. Usually Jakob is best regardless, even for male Corrin, but S Rinkah is a decent physical option. -The spouse getting Corrin’s secondary class for some unique access to classes/skills. Corrin can usually buddy into what he wants. This is more if you have a favorite of some kind and want them to have special treatment. -Kanna or too-cute-to-not-use. I find she or he is generally useful as a mixed attacker with Dragonstone and Swords, so I prefer some magical affinity in her mother. Also, Dragonstone is great at tanking so usually don’t want to hurt Def growth too much. I think Sakura is a good mother if you care more about the maingame and if you can live with yourself. Leo/Odin also decent balanced parents. -The other niche options are Felicia to pass a promoted level 15 skill early (tomebreaker easiest), or Mozume for Aptitude. Maybe Aqua for Voice of peace of something but that’s some low hp/def. I’m really bad at judging difficulty, but Hoshido lunatic feels easy enough to do whatever you want even without grinding. I’ll compare to FE13 lunatic, but I also think everyone is fairly easy to use there, which doesn’t seem to be a common opinion. Well there’s probably signficantly less babying in Hoshido, since earlygame is much tamer. Nohr is trickier, but a lot of the good characters are male, so maybe. I don’t think you can beat chapter 10 without Camilla though. And earlygame is probably a decent bit harder without Elfie to tank.

For funsies I like either ZeroxMozume for those reasons (though also for Aptitude!Eponine) or JakobxMozume for Tomebreaker!Aptitude!Deere (reclass to pally or something. Meh weapon ranks without a scroll, but high stats and magic dodgy). I'm unsure by what “objective” standard other pairings are better, considering Nohr isn’t the best postgame/pvp environment. So would I, or use Luna/Lazwald/swordchild, but Odin still has pretty high speed (12 at level 5, 55 growth, trueblade has 3 over Brave Hero) and better magic. Some people might want to use him as something other than a worse Leo (well I suppose he has slightly higher skl/bulk), despite how much work it takes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I would recommend either Zero or Bowman!Mozume (or both) as it’s very useful to oneshot fliers that swarm you in the midgame. Having Pass also simplifies Nohr’s endgame significantly, though you could always buy it too. Other than that, siblings + who you like is typically fine. I largely agree, though bexp can be exploited by funneling it all into 1 unit (Marcia/Jill/Haar). FE9 Maniac was kinda good about this admittedly, but more because siege/status hinders lowmanning to a large extent. And it did have a ridiculous amount of combat exp if one stayed to rout everything. It’s generally been easy in FE history to turtle and safely farm exp from initial enemies, reinforcements (most prominently on defend maps with very high density that could be otherwise trivialized), bosses, arenas, etc. It’s a tricky issue, without imposing turn limits, which FE14 does do occasionally, both hard and soft. Some people (vocal complainers) also tend to dislike very tight design, see early FE13 lunatic(+). A related note: Nohr does give the 0 exp skill to infinite reinforcements on a few chapters. And the exp dlc seems kinda annoying to actually train with. <_<

If Corrin isn’t +Spd, Odin is the one of few fast swordman using Braves and such in Nohr. Attacking some axe enemies can be scary, but triangle, class avoid, and flowing strike works. He also has fairly good magic for the Levin Sword, which has better mt than most tomes, so can attack Def or Res as needed. E rank tho. :\ He really should have his invisible history stats, at least. >_> IK plays different enough from the others, though I suspect they focused on developing and especially marketing map gimmicks in IK to kinda handwave the design elsewhere. A bit too transparent imo, but maybe that’s just some cynicism. I don’t really understand the unit balance complaint though. There’s quite a few weird decisions like Hana’s nerfed Str, Hinoka’s nerfed Hp, Yuugiri’s very slight buffs, Silas’ bulk vs his Spd, but there are equally mysterious cases of “what is IS thinking?” in past games. In a series where we’ve had Arden, Hannibal, Sophia, Karla, Ewan, Rolf, Meg, Fiona, etcetcetc, it’d be unfair to characterize every FE game as a cashgrab because of questionable balance issues. I mean, FE12 was clearly deliberately and cleverly designed in many ways yet a huge majority of the cast can be summarized as essentially extraneous “free silvers” (sure they could statbooster up and forged effective damage stuff but it’s not really a comparison vs the good characters.). Invisible Kingdom serves an obvious purpose, ostensibly because some significant portion of fans would find it unsatisfying and unfun that you have to lose so many characters and can’t team up otherwise. The “cashgrab” accusation is thrown around pretty trivially, for almost anything that is paid for in every industry (especially entertainment ones). Here the reason it’s paid dlc is likely just a business/economic one. In the present vg market they usually can get away with it; more revenue is better than slightly worse pr (only “bad” insofar as it hurts revenue). I won’t comment on the principle of the matter. they definitely trolled us on the deployment slots though. The children scale in level and weapon rank depending on what chapter the main story is at, so they can be useful whenever you want to pick them up. The other advantage is they can get skills from classes that would be otherwise awkward to grind levels through, or sometimes ones they just don’t have access to (from parents’ secondary classes). It seems that their bases are affected very marginally by the parents’ bases, but their growths are affected significantly by the variable parent’s growths. So as long as there isn’t too much clashing there (low def parent for a frontliner child), they’re usually worth adding to the team in the maingame. I thought FE13 was fairly homogenous about the usability of its characters (except Veteran because lol). Basically in Lunatic everyone unpromoted is a growth unit that needs some babying but then steamrolls once they get enough durability (Veteran people are much faster to that point). Everyone prepromoted is good at base and filler. Tiki is a lategame crutch if needed. The thing with IK is you blatantly get characters like Xander and characters like Odin in the same chapter, which is awkward.

The reason I don’t consider Odin and friends as bad as Sophia and friends is you have attack stance/buffs/debuffs here, so it’s easy for them to kill stuff and get lots of exp. Sophia has like no hit, so she’s (imo) way more painful to train. Also, there’s skirmishes as an option, at least in IK, that seem to be much easier than the chapters you’re on (like unpromoted units there even in the 20s chapterwise). This seems to specifically designed for the underleveled units, as your other units pretty much just get 1 exp because of how things work. I used IK!Odin (no skirmishes or grind) and it wasn’t that bad to train. Enemies aren’t very easily oneround so he can pick up kills with some favoritism, finishing off stuff. He’s not very good even when trained, obviously, but I’d say he’s more Ewan. The only Hard mode I’ve played is Nohr Hard, and it was after I did most of Nohr Lunatic (a blind run). So it did feel a lot easier (relative to Lunatic, while still harder than I expected, weirdly), but I suspect some of that was because I got used to the mechanics and gimmicks. Hard doesn’t have any of the really broken stuff (negative chain, etc), but most of the difficulty in Lunatic is tweaked skills/density/sometimes AI, so units are not really unusable statwise.

Played around with most of the My Castle stuff. For the restaurant the thing is you need to visit other castles to get different ingredients and the character that does the cooking, as well as who gets the boosts (until level 3), is random. So I don't think it's really something to rely on, though yes it gives some nice situational boosts. Also they do stack with tonics.

The Japanese wiki all say Boots afaict. Again I haven't verified myself. http://hrs-game.main.jp/fe-if/data/chapter-01-11.html http://kamigame.xsrv.jp/fireemblemif/?%B9%B6%CE%AC%A5%C1%A5%E3%A1%BC%A5%C8%B0%EC%CD%F7 http://www2.pegasusknight.com/wiki/fe14/index.php?%E3%83%9E%E3%83%83%E3%83%97%E6%94%BB%E7%95%A5%2F%E6%9A%97%E5%A4%9C%E7%8E%8B%E5%9B%BD%2016%E7%AB%A0%20%E7%99%BD%E5%A4%9C%E4%BE%B5%E7%95%A5

Right I thought that was the boots though, not a Speedwing?

I think “don’t use (unless you like her)” is a decent assessment of her viability in Lunatic, for a few of the aforementioned reasons. Using her results in a harder midgame training her, and she doesn’t impact the lategame significantly. If everyone was rated “use” because yes they’re all usable, that doesn’t distinguish characters very well. Again, the point of the topic mainly being impressions is they are highly opinionated as to what would make lunatic easier for a newer player. Still, I’ll put other impressions like yours for Charlotte in the op, so that readers get a few perspectives, perhaps different from the one I focus on detailing.

Yeah, some of the bow users’ most useful chapters are before he joins so if you’ve used Zero already, he probably has better stats. And you also get Eponine. Still if not using Zero, then probably should use Asyura for the Pass/Kunaibreaker reasons. I think you get boots (+1 move) actually, if you refuse him? though I haven’t done it myself since recruit all and such. I don’t know if I’d use a Speedwing on him, if that’s what you were talking about. Xander, Corrin (non-Spd asset), Camilla all may want it and they are much (much) more important. Maybe even Leo/Foleo if it gives them enough Speed to double/quad some key enemies. Enemies are pretty fast in general, since you fight a lot of Hoshido classes and then a good number of Heros/Berserkers late.

Well we’re past the days of Sophia and friends. Everyone is quite usable if you know how baby units. It’s just nothing about Charlotte stands out to me once she’s trained (unlike Mozume, for example), especially since there’s a lot of children characters that join with no training (not really enough slots). And I’m probably biased against unreliable things like crits. tbh it’s probably less hard to use Charlotte than Sully or other non-Veterans in FE13 Lunatic. Which is not that bad if you take some time in the early chapters. Of course Charlotte never gets as bulky as Awakening units, but relative to the game it’s not so bad. I did Revenant Knight to 5 -> Wyvern Lord to 15 -> Berserker to 19 -> Wyvern Lord with Camilla. It was mainly because I wanted to try the S rank Axe for a bit, but her durability really faltered so I switched back. In general her low Hp kinda hurts in the lategame, but it can be helped with tonics/Robes (and Hp+5 too). I think Sol would be the better option, even if you miss out on Axefaire. Actually Axebreaker from Hero is pretty nice against Berserkers/Generals later too. Could get more of these skills with some earlier reclassing, but in the midgame Camilla is really useful as a Wyvern so I would recommend staying there. However, certainly an option to Hero to 7 -> Berserker (to 15 -> Wyvern) or similar. Sol in general is still one of the best skills, but Nohr is not really the place where even self-healing will always save you on enemy phase. Still, until the reallylategame it does significantly boost durability as long as you can take a few hits to get probability on your side (repeated trials differentiates this from crits) and build the Guard gauge, etc. And Camilla definitely can (beware enemy crits somewhat tho). Also fwiw I think either Camilla or Corrin is the best unit in Nohr, in the overall sense.

Both come at level 15, very late in the game, and Tomebreaker means you're dealing with Bronze Kunai while trying to deal with the negative chain/infinite staff spam? Maybe worth buying the skill, but otherwise eh... It's not like it brings all hit rates to 0 either, and Tomes have triangle on Axes, so it's still risky. Swordbreaker is good, though Swords still have decent accuracy on her and she doesn't have the Def to back it up. I did think it was good on Camilla (and she gets it a few chapters earlier b/c of her exp), but not as much as expected.

Well usually children characters are good for pvp since they have higher caps and a wider skill pool. Since braves exist, the unrestricted meta probably is just a “first move” thing with Rescue staves. Copycat gives plenty of units to swarm with. Maybe niche vantage builds could result in stall wars too? Potentially lots of randomness with Lethality builds and such as well (or does Astra counter it, with Dual Guards?). tbh I don’t find FE the best competitive game (due to some intrinsic things about it), but to each his/her own, and still can be interesting to muse about. Yeah there’s definitely some potential with capture, but I admit I haven’t used it too much. Though I do remember the boss of N9 with Rally Defense is pretty good, especially for the defense chapter that follows. Re: Charlotte: The issue with her is Nohr Lunatic is pretty hard and she’s underleveled. I feel she doesn’t offer enough, consistently, later as a trained combat unit. Her crit can get pretty high, but that’s usually not something to rely on if you need something killed. Sol is incredibly good still, but she’s hopefully not going to take on swarms of enemies hoping to proc it to live. It certainly still helps a lot, as Charlotte usually deals enough damage to self-heal back a lot (unlike say, Luna). Raw defenses are definitely low, which is not good for a melee unit. Low Def is somewhat mitigated by high Hp and Defense stacking with Rally, Battle Command, tonics, Elise, etc (easier to stack than other stats), though she’ll never have very good durability. Mag is an easy 2hko, no matter what you try, though it typically 2-3hkos units without good res anyway. The Hp/Def/Res distribution also does make it more expensive to heal her by a bit. Though I will mention very high Str and Axes is extremely useful against Ninja, especially if she can ohko them with attack stance. Her personal mainly works against a few healing classes and also the Pegasus line (most useful in N24 probably).

High base Spd and growth so he doubles most things without help (rare in Nohr). High Res so he beats mages, and this is a consistent edge over Mozume even if you baby her. Also he (who also gives you Eponine) and Mozume are your only real Bow options unless you want to grind. Bows are good in general because they have such high Mt and to kill fliers (especially helpful for those in Guard Stance). If you’re swarmed by fliers and most units 2 round them it’s really useful to have Zero snipe them, usually at perfect accuracy. Also triangle against Ninjas is also useful since they can be dodgy, and way too annoying to leave alive between their debuffs and poison. Already mentioned Kunaibreaker and Pass. Lucky Seven is a big boost during the opening turns, where it can be important to get the situation under control. Sometimes he can even Dual guard/avoidtank with the Shining Bow for a few turns. And locktouch obviously helps on occasion. Zero likes Bowman because the bases are way better, like 7 att (14 damage between doubling, base Str and Prescient Victory). Caps don’t really matter since max stats only happen with grinding and at the very end of the game. At that point, 1-2 points wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway. I’d probably rate him use in the writeup which is going to be an edited version of this because laziness. Again this in the context of main-game, no grind play in Lunatic. edit: welp didn't see that Charlotte thing. I'll writeup some details when I get a chance (my feeling is she's going to be "don't use" tho :\ . Base Spd is eh. Nohr is a bit harsher and I'm currently thinking more "uses" and "don't uses" than maybes)

I think Bowman is an okay option if you have an Arms Scroll, ideally 2 to spare. The Shining Bow is very good but Bronze with Nyx’s strength is just eh. Some of these skill combinations noted are pretty good for the children however, like Defensive formation from Effie to for Nostank or Raven Strike from Mozume (Aptitude not great if child recruited late). Endgame (in lunatic) without pass is a good bit harder, kinda like FE5 without warp or something. imo Zero is already one the best characters just going Outlaw -> Adventurer to 15 -> Bow Knight. Maybe fit marriage seal with Mozume somewhere.

Both Revenant Knight and Dark Knight are nice classes because of their mobility, but lategame Nohr is particularly bad (good?) about destroying units who go off on their own with debuffs/staves/etc. So for casual use Sorc is nice for the hit (S rank, class bonus), Excalibur, and Mag (especially with galeforce). Nosferatu also can allow taking a hit or 2 in an emergency. Nyx not as much, but the others. I think you can do some tricky FE12 style things where a seemingly fragile unit (Dark Mage) takes a few hits away from the primary tank, who takes the other hits. If they all swarmed 1 unit maybe that one would die. It’s fairly important to have Strategists for the staves as well, I was mainly referring to the dark mages. The thing about Elise is she’s way better offensively, even if she starts at E rank, so she’s a more flexible unit. Felicia/Jakob have low stats for later. Zero/Asyura have fairly low mag and probably can’t use the better staves. Lategame they might want to be Bow Knights for Kunaibreaker against Negative chain (but grab Pass first otherwise endgame is kinda….)