Like a hot wind Varn Gosam of the Malakim [SPOILERS]

[Square Leg]

Hey Thoth,

Nice to see you are back! How is your own PC?

[Thoth]

Hey Thoth,

Nice to see you are back! How is your own PC?

Thanks.

My PC is toast. Given my current finances, I'm looking at being computerless until April. I feel like I'm blind in one eye without home net access.

A few random thoughts/observations:

1) Civics: I'm not sure who made the swap to Nationhood , but that was a bit of . Nationhood didn't provide any benifit, and delayed the swap to GK by a few turns. I'd planned on a swap to GK @ turn 13 and a swap into Pacifism @ turn 23, then back to Religion @ turn 39 (after the 1st great person popped).

2) Promotions: I'd suggest using them as you get the exp for them and heading straight up the combat line for now. In a couple of screenshots you've got Redshirts with enough exp to promote, but without the promotions. Each combat promotion is worth +20% to your base strength....

3) Plans: Feel free to thow out any plans I'd posted previously. I'd actually changed plans after popping the GM, but didn't get a chance before Putermaggedon struck. In particular, I'd run a sim and growing to size 5 (turn 14) before spitting out a worker and then building an elder council for a GS produced very good results. (at turn 39 I had Myst, Ag, Exploration, Crafting and Mining with a turn or so into RoK and an Academy....). Bulbing Rok still looks like a decent plan, and assuming we survive all the critters that you keep popping we should be in good shape, especially if you micro things so that we get the RoK holy city in GLT, this might require delaying the second city for a turn or two.

It looks like we're in decent shape at the moment assuming we manage not to loose the worker to the mistform. There is some good land to the north and west that we won't have to compete over and if we can get a settler or two out to the east to grab up some of those tasty floodplains we should be in great shape land-wise. All that desert around us kind of sucks from a settling POV, but fovours us from a military standpoint: everyone else pays 2 movement points to enter a desert tile, we get doulbe move in desert and a combat bonus.

For the short/medium term I'd focus on getting out warriors, settlers and workers with an eye to settling as many cities as possible before turn 70 rolls around and we loose the creative trait.

I would give some serious thought to taking Philo as our turn 70 trait. That will give us cheap libraries and elder councils plus the GPP boost. We'll be wanting 1-2 GS's for academies, at least 2 more Gprophets (more if you plan on taking advantage of Lightbringer upgrade possibilities. Each level of the Altar of Luonataar adds +2 exp to disciple units....).

Good job on keeping up the thread post count BTW. Winning the thread spam competition was one of my goals in this game. :D

[Sciz]

Then you got the right man to take over your thread! I consider myself second to almost none in the art of posting much.

After the settler is done i plan on creating lots of warriors, never know when that mistform shows up.

Other than that i'm not completely sure yet. I still favor financial heavily over philosophical. Sure libraries and what not are cheaper, but the 5c flood plains and 4c other river tiles are such a massive boost. 100% great person generation is good, but altars are a bit of a waste imo, even though they give exp to disciple units they only do so in that specific city I believe, and with spiritual the disciple units should gain exp fairly fast anyways. Although when you think about it, flood plain farms with aristocracy without financial should still be 4c because of the extra commerce boost for malakim on flood plains, so early on we could go without financial. We have quite a fair amount of flood plains that it should work out.

Is it turn 70 and then turn 140 the next switch is? If so we could go something other than financial for the first switch, and then go financial at 140 when we've expanded past the flood plains we have nearby, and want the extra boost. Something to think about I guess. Philo would help us get some more prophets and a sage or two I guess, though I wouldn't waste the prophets on the altar IMO, instead founding shrines or bulbing religions. But we're pretty far away from that now, so we don't have to worry about that decision yet.

I think tech will go towards aristocracy now, which only needs education and Code of Laws unless i'm mistaken. Depends if we want to hook up the sheep (and cows when we get it in our cultural zone) soon or not. We're at the health cap already, though that doesn't really matter yet I guess. After Aristocracy we should obviously head down the religious tech. Priesthood asap for the various priests we can get.

[Sciz]

Took some screens now to make a dotmap tomorrow, should've made one ages ago since we've basically planned out most city sites already, but i've been too lazy.

Also noticed that a great sage was born in a foreign land, and unless it's some event or something that must be WK getting a great sage from an elder council sage, since he's the only philosophical leader and it feels like you must be philosophical to get one this fast. I may be wrong though of course! We're getting a great prophet in 4 turns after all without philo.

[Sciz]

Well then! Mining completed, and I start research on education. Was debating where to go here, but I figured getting aristocracy asap would be our best move as we have no commerce resources nearby any cities yet. Could have gone with calendar for agrarianism, but I felt aristocracy is more worth it for now. Might change though if any of you can convince me otherwise. Could also get animal husbandry to get the sheep, but I don't really need it yet.

Settler completed and he headed up northwest with a warrior, more on that later though. In the capital work starts on a warrior. 2t for a warrior, i'll prolly bang our 4-5 of them for decent defense. If the mistform appears I'll get more probably. Though.. I can't see the mistform, can I? I seem to recall someone saying it was invisible, but since i've never spawned a mistform before, and considering my lightbringer could see it, i dunno. Speaking of defense against the mistform, I might consider getting exploration first, it's a 5t tech and it would make it easier to reinforce GLT from city #2 if the mistform shows up without warning.

Speaking of the settler, here's what I am deciding between:



The settler is currently 1S of the yellow dot. It's either red dot or yellow dot obviously. Right now I'm leaning towards red dot. Let's compare!

Red dot:
-On a hill (for better defense)
-4 grassland hills
-4 peaks
-1 overlapping tile with GLT (besides a peak)
-0 overlapping tiles with city to the east
-7 riverside grasslands
-2 non-river grasslands
-3 coastal tiles

Yellow dot:
-Not on a hill
-5 grassland hills
-2 peaks
-3 overlapping tiles with GLT (besides a peak)
-2 or 3 overlapping tiles with city to the east
-6 riverside grasslands
-3 non-river grasslands
-1 plains tile
-3 coastal tiles

So basically, Red dot has two less workable tiles, but much less overlap than yellow dot would have. Red tile also has better defense, and more riverside tiles for commerce. One less hill but that's not a big deal imo. So i'm leaning towards red dot.

The two eastern dots are what i'm considering for the city to be placed around there. Purple has much less overlap and less peaks, but is coastal, which wouldn't be ideal for potential lanun raiding. But that's a long time in the future and purple dot should be better imo.

Let's make a bit of a dotmap for the other areas, then!

First, the east:



If you have no idea what's going on in this pic, then that's fine, because neither do I really! I just completed it and I already don't know what I was thinking. But basically green dot we probably won't get. It's pretty close to the Bannor capital, and i'd be really surprised if we got there first, and they would prolly be pretty angry if we took that spot. But yeah. It really depends whether we think we can take that spot east or not. If we don't think we can, we should probably go with blue dot instead of red, because blue gets 4 FP tiles, while red only gets two, which makes it harder for red to grow enough to use all the hill tiles. Red does get a cow, but that's not as good as a flood plain tile. We need spring to water stuff here also. If we take blue dot we obviously can't make green dot, but instead we might be able to take a spot Southeast of the lake, though that would be stretching it.

I really think we'd be better off with blue dot. We lose a grassland hill, plains cow, desert hill and two peaks, and gain two flood plains, one plains hill, and two desert tiles. What do you guys think?

Now for the south and west:



Cyan dot and Orange dot are pretty much set in stone IMO. I like orange dot a bit more than the previously placed city sign, but there's no big difference between them. We're gonna need lots of springing here to make tiles good. Some blooming after said springing would also be very helpful. The other dots are just weird preliminary thoughts of cities beyond the two established sites. Didn't put much thought into them. We need to scout a bit more first, after I finish off the warriors i'm making now, and maybe a worker and settler in between, I should probably make a lightbringer or two to scout some more. Maybe can make some in city #2.

[Sciz]

Okay then! Our second city is found...



Jerusalem! And right away I notice that 1N might have been better, given there's a fish resource just out of reach. Oh well, couldn't have known that before settling the city.

Jerusalem starts on a warrior. As you can see in the lower right our nice worker has abandoned the flood plain and started mining instead, two turns for a mine there which will be nice. I should make a worker in GLT soon, but I need safety first. The spectre I popped from the pyre has been found lurking to the southeast of the barrow to the east, so only 4 tiles away from the capital. Hopefully the mistform isn't on that same tile!

[Sciz]

Well, it would seem that we are fucked.

I'm not gonna update anything right now, but all seemed well and dandy last turn until I sent the turn on... And got the message that a warrior was killed in the capital by a barbarian mistform.



So uh, how does one go about to combat a mistform? I mean, I can't bloody see it! Do I need a scout or a hawk or something? I have two damn warriors in my capital. I do not create one a turn, not yet anyways. I have a Thane of Kilmorph incoming. This kind of sucks.

[fire&ice]

Hm do I see the quickest elimination in a PBEM coming along

[Square Leg]

I think it is invisible like a Spider in that when you find it, you can see it to whack it with warriors... but if it keeps picking them off you are fucked!

Umm... maybe a WB test is in order but to be honest - it doesn't look too promising for us right now does it?

[Selrahc]

Do I need a scout or a hawk or something?

True invisibility, so you need a hawk at least.

There is absolutely nothing that you can do to fight mistforms at this stage of the game beyond building warriors and hoping to get lucky. Sorry.

EDIT: Although it can't take cities, so that's something.