Freezing the World below Absolute Zero - Illians Succession Game

[Mardoc]

I wasn't going to spam anything, honestly, except maybe Triremes until we own our coastlines. For the moment, my primary focus is going to be economy. We still have ~6 city sites that can be founded (2 settlers in transit), and a lot of our cities are small, in need of infrastructure, or both. I'll try to keep 2-3 cities on military production, not go complete Farmer's Gambit here, but...we're not at war, the AI's are mostly distracted, and I'd rather push the snowball than try to build an army today that can stand up to the AI's.

Iron Working is still useful even if we don't have iron in our territory: Shipyards give all water tiles +1 hammer. Once we finish settling, we'll have ~12 coastal cities that all want shipyards to go with their lighthouses and harbors. I really feel like hammer production is going to consistently be our main bottleneck, so the extra beakers to unlock more hammers seems like a worthwhile trade.

[Mardoc]

The first few turns were pretty uneventful. Got our hunter promoted to Subdue, healing to grab some bears and a scorpion, founded a couple cities.

Then, on T246:



About 2/3 of our cities are destined to lose population, unfortunately. Still, that wouldn't bother me much except that this forboded ill:





The silver lining is that she certainly wasn't prepared for war. There is nothing on our border except a handful of garrisons; she's quite distracted by the Kuriotates. The Deepening is due to complete in two turns; stacked with Blight I expect it to absolutely ravage our foes' production.

But we still have to survive her currently existing army, somehow. Which is likely to call for impeccable tactics, and I'm too sleepy to play impeccably. I'd also welcome any tactical insight the rest of you might have:

T247 Save

I can finish up my turnset tomorrow - or if one of you feels particularly militaristic, I can surrender my remaining three turns now.


I guess I *should* have spammed out units, huh?

[jalepeno]

Yikes!

some thoughts

• I'm hoping she's still at war with Malakim...? having/bringing in allies will make a huge difference.
  
• since we've got no metal, drafting javelin throwers probably better than axes *edit* except that we can enchant blades on our axes, so they'll be marginally better on the offensive, but significantly worse on city/hill defense.
  
• Setting up the blizzards in her preferred paths is nice - can do some decent damage
  
• I think we stop taxation and grab necro (4 turns) and HB (as fast as 2 turns) in some order. I'm thinking bone wall and rust should come first actually since we're short on promos to give new units mobility.
  
• obviously cut all trireme production - not going to do us any good now.
  
• empty the north, except near fogged areas. iirc, we've got excess happy and every unit will be precious.
  
• what civics do we want? Agrarianism would slow the starvation, allowing more hammers to go into troops. Extra +10% from nationhood could be useful as well. I'd love some XP civics, but I think blight kills conquest for us.
  
• let's get Slow'ing and hope no more chariots show!
  

[Mardoc]

I'm hoping she's still at war with Malakim...? having/bringing in allies will make a huge difference.

Yes, and at war with the Kurios. Although both have taken serious losses lately, she might still be overstretched.

since we've got no metal, drafting javelin throwers probably better than axes *edit* except that we can enchant blades on our axes, so they'll be marginally better on the offensive, but significantly worse on city/hill defense.

I forgot we had the draft. If it lets us draft javelins, I will absolutely use it. I thought it was limited to melee but that might be BtS thinking.

Setting up the blizzards in her preferred paths is nice - can do some decent damage

Yep. OTOH, a pair of Empower 5 elementals every turn could do some decent damage too, at least if she trickles her army in rather than bringing a deathstack. Which is higher priority for the PoW?

I think we stop taxation and grab necro (4 turns) and HB (as fast as 2 turns) in some order. I'm thinking bone wall and rust should come first actually since we're short on promos to give new units mobility.

Makes sense. Especially now that she has Gal-Dur.

what civics do we want? Agrarianism would slow the starvation, allowing more hammers to go into troops. Extra +10% from nationhood could be useful as well. I'd love some XP civics, but I think blight kills conquest for us.

I think I might pop into Conquest anyway - for the most part, our Blighted cities don't have any chance of enough food no matter what they do, so they'll be working all cottages/mines to get maximum production. Maybe in five turns we can go to Agrarianism, once starvation and blight fading have made the food deficit manageable.

Except...hmm. It's also rather important to have the commerce to get to Necro quickly. Well, I guess that probably has to be decided by looking at the actual game.

let's get Slow'ing and hope no more chariots show!

yep! Ice mana is awesome.

[DaveV]

I loaded the game and took a quick look, and I noticed Alexis will give us Wheat and 4 GPT for one of our spare Silks. We could also trade a silk for more happy, but I think happiness is the least of our problems.

[Qgqqqqq]

This is going to be interesting

You finish your set - I've a test today, and I'm not going to want to play turns like that until I'm in exactly the right frame of mind.

[flugauto]

Have you buildt your 1st hero?

[Aurorarcher]

Nope, we'd need Iron Working for our Wilboman (not that great hero tbh).

[flugauto]

A highly promoted hero can kill hundreds of low level units.

[Qgqqqqq]

Yes, but when you get them as late as Wilboman comes, they're not going to be highly promoted for a good long time, which is why they normally have advantages and special abilities to make up for it. Wilboman doesn't really have any of those - I'd take an adept with the hero promotion over him, probably.