FFHII Adventure 5 - Results and sponsor's comments

[Mist]

Let's start with the results, since that's faster.

First, last and only place :

[SIZE="5"]Mardoc[/SIZE] - reached the goal on t173

There were no other submissions within deadline.

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So why did I try to float this apparent lead baloon of an Adventure? Few reasons ( including the fact Bob was looking tired and could use a breather ), but mainly in hope of attracting some actual gameplay feedback for Sareln and resolving some of the question marks hanging around the changes. The one posed here was

'Is the Foreign Trade implementation in Build 4 sane?'

So is it too strong? Is it a new Aristocracy perhaps? Or maybe it's still not enough? Does it make a pure trade route economy possible? If yes, what's the potential and requirements?

500 commerce was picked on completely arbitrary as a figure that boosted by %age bonuses would give a strong base for late game. I rolled a continents map to make sure there would be some intercontinental trade possible. I made sure there's a direct competition for key wonders by placing Hannah. I placed Tebryn on the same landmass as the player to keep people mildly honest in regard to expansion speed and military presence. Apart for that I was fairly generous with providing an environment for a relaxed game and making the target easy to reach. I expected the key elements of the puzzle to be the Lighthouse, Foreign Trade civic, Overcouncil, Optics and Astronomy.

My own, rather unfocused, shadow game finished on turn 155. Which is close enough to figure of 150 I estimated before launching the map. Last dozen turns or so was just waiting for the cities on the middle island to grow enough and finish lighthouses. During the time I kept Tebryn from going aggressive with liberal use of gifts, but never really got an open borders with him as he picked me as his worst enemy. I stayed Expansive on first trait swap to keep up pushing cities. Production shortages were fixed by liberal application of whips all over the place. Generally I had a nice and quiet sandbox with an occasional spider eating my settlers.

To answer my own questions - it's not overpowered, requires a lot of infrastructure in hammers and beakers spent teching economy. It's distinctly average without intercontinental routes. Certainly you can't rely on it alone for commerce and on water light maps it'll be at best a part of a hybrid approach. Is it too weak? Also probably not. It finally makes for a valid choice on par with agrarianism, if more situational.

Which is all made redundant anyhow, because Sareln changed FT again for Build 5

So anyway, thank you for giving it a whirl and I hope everyone that tried this had fun. I'd also like to encourage everyone that didn't finish or abandoned the attempt to post even a partial report. Sareln will still be able to pull valuable info from it.

[Ichabod]

I played the game and probably reached the goal sooner than turn 150, but since I don't know any easy way to count trade routes, I don't really now.

The reason why I'm almost sure it was before turn 150 is because I popped fishing from a hut on turn 2/3 or something. So I head a big headstart on Pirate Coves (I settled the capital 1S, if I remember correctly, for two pirate coves - one on a lake - and a fish). I played it pretty serious for the first turns, expanding pretty fast into a lot of cities.

My tech path was Fishing - Runes of Kilmorph (I payed for the cities mostly with RoK, RoK temples and markets) - trade route techs (currency, lighthouses, foreign trade, inns, etc), with some needed things in the middle.

With God King and the early coves + mines, I was building settlers in 2/3 turns in the capital (and I was doing it pretty early too). After a while I stopped playing optimally and the expansion started to become slower, even though I kept expansive at the adaptive switch. I also took more time than necessary to reach astronomy for the intercontinetal trade routes. My GNP was so big that I could have done it way faster.

I also declared on Tebryn and took some of his cities with Bambur, Paramanders and axemen.

I'll find my saves and try to take a look on when I reached the goal.

[Mist]

You want to add up this column in sity screen ( F1 )

[NobleHelium]

I played through like 110ish turns. It got pretty boring after I founded every religion, so I haven't completed it.

I spammed cottages everywhere. I figured the Lanun had more than enough food already anyway, and Aristocracy required Feudalism. I think I actually preferred plains cottages, but that's probably because I was too lazy to bother with Slavery.

Anecdotal highlights: got the harpy event after growing my capital a sizeable amount, I took it. Capital starved down to 3 but then regrew quickly, I think I came out ahead with the +3 gpt from the Bard. Orthus spawned on the goblin fort in the middle of the island and promptly destroyed the new Sheaim city right next to it. After they refounded it I was able to take it with ease using the ~36 exp warrior I got from killing Orthus at ~25% odds.

[Ichabod]

Unfortunately, I lost the autosaves. I only have the save after I popped fishing, but that's not very useful.

The strategy I used was to spam cities at every possible tile, in ICS style. I got the Great Lighthouse too. It's a shame I lost the saves, it'd be nice to compare...