[SPOILERS] They're cOMing to taKe mE AWAy! Haha! Hoho.

[Qgqqqqq]

Nah, its 9gpt with the other cities (based on the before/after pics - it may be more if you have unit costs).
Remember the 10t revolt rule.

[Mardoc]

Nah, its 9gpt with the other cities (based on the before/after pics - it may be more if you have unit costs).

Oh, I see. That drop from 84 to 81 gpt. Do have about 10 gpt in unit costs, but a new size 1 city wouldn't save us much there.

Remember the 10t revolt rule.

Yeah, may need to bundle Slavery and Foreign Trade. But I still ought to get us into City States ASAP.

[Mardoc]

Had a turn this morning. Didn't bother to take any pictures, nothing much new this turn. Loki heads off into the wilderness next turn, though, so that's something.

One very annoying fact about a mage army - you've got to build it way before you need it. I don't think it's likely that I need to fight anyone in the next 20+ turns - but if I want mages then, I need to build adepts now. Going to try to keep at least one adept in production at all times from here to...probably the end of the game, honestly. Still, at least being Balseraph means I can get some economic use out of adepts. Maybe the barbs will build me another city somewhere, too!

Turned on Carto research. Can't quite 1-turn it, but I suspect we'll have enough overflow to 1-turn Sailing afterward.

Went back and forth on what Ringmaster should build. I want Dereptus - it'll pay almost as much as an offshore city . I want my foodsaver buildings. I want that offshore city, too. So what's most urgent? Um...

Went with a smokehouse this turn, on the theory that growing faster makes everything else easier.

I'm debating offshore vs onshore cities. With Trade due soon, we'll have 3-4 trade routes per city; each offshore site pays quite a bit by boosting the inland cities. But...island cities are pretty worthless otherwise. Some commerce, maybe eventually some Slavery hammer production, and not much else. Plus they require a lot of investment - lighthouse for sure, harbor likely, shipyard's not a bad idea - while a land city needs to borrow some worker turns and that's it.

Probably will end up alternating. The more land cities I have, the more valuable an offshore one is, after all. It'll let me get by with fewer workers, too; my current supply is keeping up for now, but I'm going to have some challenges if I keep adding fast growing cities at the rate I have been lately.

[Mardoc]

Verry...interesting...



Why, hello there Mr. Griffon. What'cha doin'? Explore Lair (1), hmm?

Ok, so here's hoping for 'your unit is lost' and not 'free golden age' out of Elli. If I'd noticed him sooner, I might have attempted to kill the griff, but he'll run away before we could have hit him with anything more than a single Puppet.

But also - told you my scouting sucks! That there is a mana node. We ought to explore the area in detail to figure out the best way to claim it. Assuming I don't have to fight off Mistforms right away, I think I'll send the sword down SW, since it looks like a peninsula, and Loki off to the NW.

Combination of the two suggests I want to go ahead and turn the local node to Death, and start sending out a bunch of scouting skeletons. Who absolutely should explore every dungeon I find, before someone else can. Course, I do need to research Necromancy to do that, but it's probably cheaper than using a bunch of swords. Keep the swords home to defend against spawns, my own and whatever else Elli gets up to.

Adept XP count:
0XP: 0
1XP: 2

[Mardoc]

No turn this morning . Looks like Elli had a busy day, and wasn't able to get the turn to HK til after HK was in bed.

Which, y'know, would be just a small delay in the pace, if I hadn't been spoiled by 2-3 turns/day for the past few. Likely to have a turn when I get home, at any rate.

So, plans. I still think we need to stick with econ techs for the moment. Sailing next turn, so we can get our doubled trade routes going. Add the revolt to City States to knock down that 74 gpt in costs to something a bit more reasonable.

After that, we still want to finish off our worker techs and civics, so Writing -> Trade -> Hunting -> Philosophy is the most likely path. We want to get to Trade ASAP since it helps immediately, while both Hunting and Philo can wait a bit. Philo needs to come in ideally exactly 10 turns from next turn's City States revolt, so we can revolt FT/Slavery at the soonest date. Hunting needs to arrive sometime before we need the fur/ivory/deer. So exact order will depend on how our tech rate looks in City States.

Then, it's a question of which direction to go next. One option is to pick up a religion while we're still in GA - probably AV, but I'm not certain about it, if you want to try to talk me out of the idea. I reread Undercouncil this morning - it's got an advantage I forgot: enables cash rushing. Not something we'd want to use now, but options are always useful. That's the main reason to consider Esus, also - even if I think I can get archmages later, one guaranteed available early is worth quite a bit.

After that - I'm not sure what makes sense. One option is to pick up Masonry -> Construction -> Sanitation, to get our farms and roads boosted. Another is to go directly to Sanitation, skipping Construction. I've been cottaging nearly all the potential chain irrigated lands, so it would pretty much only buy us bridges, chariots, and catapults. Bridges would be very useful, but the others - well, I think Mages with summons and Fireballs will be more effective.

The other logical option is to go directly toward mages. Pick up Necromancy first for military, probably Elementalism next for Spring (and more military options - fireballs are excellent, and that's where all the good archmages are), and then the last two, followed by Sorcery. Hopefully by that time we've got a number of adepts ready to upgrade.

I guess it depends mostly on how urgently we need military. Which is a wait and see situation. I'm leaning toward splitting the difference and researching Sanitation but not Masonry/Construction yet. I know that costs us a prereq bonus, but I think Construction's benefits aren't big enough to be worth the delay.

Main potential change to the above: Necromancy may need to be advanced, depending on circumstances. At the moment, it's worth very little, I don't have enough adepts built, nor do they have free promotions. But both should change as we progress.

[Mardoc]

not 'free golden age' out of Elli.

Oh, bloody hell.

Found his griffon, untouched, the dungeon is gone, no Great People in the log. So either he got himself a free golden age from my dungeon, the one I was too slow to open, or else he saved up his Drama bard for a long time, just to pop a GA now. Sure. I believe that coincidence.

ARRRGGH!

In other news...someone went for OO? Pretty sure it's not HK, that'd be ridiculous as an elf. Particularly an elf with lots of immature forests. I don't honestly think the Sidar have the resources to go for it. But Ellimist...I wonder what all his griffon really saw? What he described sounds like a prize in itself, but there's no reason to think he told me the whole truth.

I know he's had Sailing for a while, he's had Pearls for trade. Maybe...maybe I need to reorient seaward a bit. Or a bunch. Mages would let me rule the waves despite OO, but there will be a fairly vulnerable spot in the near future. Air I will help, but I may need to build myself a navy. Despite a late start, and being behind in the demos.

-----------

Well. No one promised you it'd be easy. Think happy thoughts, Mardoc, happy thoughts.

One good thing - we're now into City States! I went ahead and picked up Apprenticeship, too, and in retrospect I should have but didn't swap from Religion to Nationhood. Still, starting off our adepts with 2XP ought to help matters.

Before:




After:





+30 gpt, -12 hpt, that's probably a trade worth doing. And of course it would have only gotten worse with time.

In other news...I found an unconventional happy resource! Possibly an unintentional one, too



We 1-turned Sailing, as expected. It looks like Writing and Trade will each be 2 turns of 100% research, and Philo will be 1 or 2. So the first step is to save gold again, enough at least to run straight to Trade. Probably no point in excess, better to have Trade ASAP. Which means one or two turns of full gold is all I'll do here. I think that means Hunting will easily fit before Philo and not delay the revolt - that'll let me pick up three happy resources and a health. Ivory, Furs, Deer, and BEARS! .

Nothing much new empire management-wise. Just growing up cities and building stuff. Really need to resume settler building at some point soon. Think perhaps next turn we go for a settler out of Ringmaster, and have High Dive build us some boats.

If I liked that offshore site before, it's even better now:



But that's probably not going to be our first Pearls:



Adept XP count:
1 XP: 1
2 XP: 1

[Merovech]

I'm pretty sure that all of those bears have spawned during the course of the game, if that's to what you are referring.

[Mardoc]

I'm pretty sure that all of those bears have spawned during the course of the game, if that's to what you are referring.

It was, yes. I know how easy it is to stack up goblin archers with worldbuilder alone, figured bears in bear dens might do the same.

But it might be even cooler for them to have spawned naturally. Now if they'll just hold still long enough for me to get a couple hunters over there...

[Qgqqqqq]

They stacked up, I didn't notice spawning in XXVI.
Is that a pearl on a mana node in the EoT picture?

I don't know how to persuade you away from veil, not sure I even WANT to.
I certainly am not pro-esus, I've never even played it, I just wonder if ritualists are needed with air/fire magi.
I agree the OO/GA is...disturbing.

[Mardoc]

Is that a pearl on a mana node in the EoT picture?

No, that's a pointer to an offscreen pearl, on the mana node. The actual pearl is the one by Elephant Show.

I don't know how to persuade you away from veil, not sure I even WANT to.
I certainly am not pro-esus, I've never even played it, I just wonder if ritualists are needed with air/fire magi.

It's still up in the air for me. I would probably build a couple Ritualists for healing, but that's not the main reason to go AV. But of course SacWeak only matters in a fairly long game. Need time to research it, get into the religion

I think, I think I'm leaning toward no religion for now. We can change that at any time, and I certainly don't intend this to be our last GA. But neither religion's benefits require us to be the founder (with Nox broken, at any rate), everyone else has committed to a religion anyway so competition is unlikely. Mst importantly: barely any of the religion benefits are things I can use right away. The useful benefits require more teching (Priesthood, Infernal Pact, Sorcery). The immediate benefits would be happiness (which we're in good shape on) and culture, which we're also good on.

So at minimum, religion should wait until we can use it.

Plus, well, my adepts are doing surprisingly well. I should play with Arcane more often, I think! At this rate, I'll have a bunch of 8 XP four-promo adepts long before I have Sorcery.

Anyway, had a turn late last night; I really should have been in bed rather than playing. But I wasn't.

Started a settler in Ringmaster and will start boats from High Dive next turn. I think I ought to build a workboat for the fish first, then a Galley for a settlement party; if I'm counting turns right, that doesn't delay settlement but does ensure a good tile to work right away.

Elephant Show is building a workboat, although Pearls won't be a first priority tile to work for a while. Need to grow first. But empire-wide happy is always useful.

We've got our first Village! Cottage econ is finally starting to be worth something. Of course it'll be better, faster, once we're into Foreign Trade. But still - we've caught up to Elli in GNP, but our tiles have a lot more room to grow than his. At least when we're both in GA.

At EOT the GA ended, dropping us from ~130 gpt to ~63. Which is still much better than 9 turns ago, but I'll be using Revelry next time the save comes around. Need that boost into the midgame, badly. Presumably getting another 2-3 trade routes/city, offshore and foreign trade, and more cottage growth, will leave us with a decent GNP on the other end. At the very least, we ought to be in a spot where each new city is profitable.

I've got too many high priorities at the moment . Need to somehow rank them. But I want:

• Lots of adepts built
  
• Lots of cities built, on and offshore
  
• Granaries and Smokehouses built, and filled
  
• A substantial navy built
  
• lots of scouting done
  
• All the techs!
  

Ok, so techs I think I've figured out. Grab the vital ones, save the less vital for later, come back if Ellimist gives me time.

But what's the right balance between settlers, warriors, freaks, adepts, and ships? I don't know! I guess I'll do some of all of them, and hope not to come up short.

Probably I need to sit down with the map sometime this weekend, and make another dotmap. Having a better idea what cities I want should let me work backward to what military and workers I need.

Adept count:
2 XP: 2
3 XP: 1