Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, probably don't want another wraith incident. Him popping the lair would generate a different result most likely.

[Gaspar]

Well, we have a turn. What have we in this turn? Not much, probably. Also, my gentle prodding in my PB4 thread got a response out of Nicolae, 11 days after I sent one to him. Clearly, alive or dead, Nicolae is not going to make a good ally. I understand the slow early turns of FFH2, but if you wait 11 days when I'm you're only contact, you are not actually interested in working with me. I'm pretty sold that we want to be ready to attack them on T100, so let's tech/settle/etc with that in mind. Hopefully he clears a few jungles for me.

19 point increase for the Clowns (Got to be pop plus classical tech this time,) 14 points for the Grigori (classical tech,) 14 points for us (land points,) 6 points for the Sheaim (pop,) 12 points for the Elohim (land points for a coastal capital?)

Warrior completes in the Capital, onto another. Out of boredom and some sense of adventure, I decide I'm going to take the recently completed warrior and see what we can see about the lairs around the capital. We can now produce 3T warriors at max hammers, which should be enough if something gets ugly. Plus, just mashing enter gets old fast.

This fascinating event occurred:



Hurrah? Not so much, eh? Oh... you were wondering what happened to Bahamet?



Easy come, easy go.

EOT demos show that we're first in CY! That means a bit more in BTS than it does here, but hey, growth is still good, even if we're working mostly garbage tiles.



Here's a picture showing what we already know, The Chronic is the greatest city in the world!



After this next warrior we'll start a worker unless we get some danger. Might as well get some hammers into it even if there's little to build. We'll swap to an EC as soon as Mysticism comes in, and then after that's built, go ahead and work on connecting the next city site. I suppose its probably high time for a dotmap. So here's the best overview shot I can come up with if any of the Ljosalfar Council feels so motivated:



The red x's represent the marble in the west and the gold in the east, which don't show up nicely on Cntl-R in this shot.

[Gaspar]

Here's Nicolae's email. I present it without comment for the time being, but I'll get back to it later:

Hi Gaspar,

Thanks for reminding me that I'm not playing a CTON. I had a big reply posted in my thread awaiting Selrahc's signing it off, but I got sidetracked and completely forgot about it. He did advise me that it's a bit early to make any land deals, my scout got eaten by a giant spider while I was attempting to defog the area between our capitals. I don't have much land to my east, what little coast I can see makes it look like I'm on the SE edge of a big disc.

Also, that Lizardcop picked up C2 from Cheech, and it picked up C3 one of my warriors. Part of the reason why I wasn't particularly responsive was because I had a this lizard and 2 skeletons inside my borders. I didn't really feel like I was long for this world. But it just moved away to the north, so just letting you know there's a C3 Lizard in the jungle between our capitals D:

Take care,
Nicolae

[Man Behind the Mask]

Very sorry for lack of chatter. I'm away at the moment (this is why I can't play any of these games).

Will reply at length when I get back, but was desperate to pick up on something from the email. Nic says "big disc", which suggests that is some kind of inland sea to our west, with a connection to the south somewhere.

[Mardoc]

19 point increase for the Clowns (Got to be pop plus classical tech this time,) 14 points for the Grigori (classical tech,) 14 points for us (land points,) 6 points for the Sheaim (pop,) 12 points for the Elohim (land points for a coastal capital?)

Hang on - T21 is 20 turns past the clown border expansion, I think, if they're ahead of us in the turn order - remember Creative gets the border pop on 2nd turn. And 12 tiles (2nd ring) is 19 points. Grigori also settled late, so this is probably their initial land points. I could believe that the Elohim were our competitor who settled coastal for score increase #3.

I'm pretty sure (but not positive) that a classical tech is worth twice an ancient tech, or 22 points.

On Nicolae - if he was already worried he wouldn't make it, adding 3 Spectres would probably have finished him. Darn! That could partially explain why he's been playing hammer heavy food poor, too, especially if he hasn't dared to keep his worker in the countryside.

[Gaspar]

I'll reply on the other issues raised shortly, but just looking at that overview - man, I hope everyone got this boned on commerce specials. Cotton's the worst resource in the game, and we have jungled gold. That is it. If someone else has a bunch of plains river incense or something I'm going to throw a fit when I see the map. :P

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, I was looking at dotmap possibilities and I just see a lot of...food. Yeah...

[Gaspar]

I'll put up something more significant later, but I think what I'm gleaning from the map, we pretty much have no choice but to aim our civ at taking out Sheaim when our NAP expires. There just isn't enough quality land around to push our tech rate high enough, and with this little bit of lux around, we're not going to be able to push the happy cap high enough pre-GON. Maybe if we meet some other civs and set up resource trades, but that's about it. Given the trouble he's having, both admitted and imagined I kind of wish I hadn't pushed him into that NAP. I think I could probably have gotten something headed in his direction before he had enough PZs to be a threat. As Mardoc said, 2 PZs isn't scary, its a nice stack of them that's frightening, and with the way his open has gone, I don't see that being a problem anytime soon.

Other thought - more and more I'm thinking settling the fish site next makes sense. If for no other reason than a scouting workboat might be the only way we're going to meet anyone else, and it would also give us an opportunity to see the Sheaim lands. Of course, it'll just get eaten by a griffon in 2 turns, but one has to try.

[Azoth]

Other thought - more and more I'm thinking settling the fish site next makes sense. If for no other reason than a scouting workboat might be the only way we're going to meet anyone else, and it would also give us an opportunity to see the Sheaim lands. Of course, it'll just get eaten by a griffon in 2 turns, but one has to try.

Surely it's better to wait for Hawks/Hunters for all your scouting needs?

[Gaspar]

Surely it's better to wait for Hawks/Hunters for all your scouting needs?

Probably you're right. I guess I'm just looking at at least 35 turns before Hunting, possibly more if we go AH first. That's a lot of known tech discount beakers we could be picking up, not to mention a lot of opportunities for diplomatic blocks to form before we get a piece of them. Still, the overwhelming likelihood is that a scouting workboat in this game is just flushing hammers down the toilet.

Quiet in here, just looking to promote some discussion. Clearly I need to make a few more silly posts.