Tempting to place it for the coastal forests isn't it.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
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[SPOILERS] They're cOMing to taKe mE AWAy! Haha! Hoho.
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Ok, so the game's not over yet; I might be able to inflict enough damage on Ellimist to bring this back to an even three-way, or even to get locked into a three way war and let Molach compete. It all depends on whether he comes before or after Sorcery, and a bit on whether I can manage war tactics or not. Maelstrom makes it easy mode, but I'm sure I can mess it up regardless
 But nonetheless, Ellimist is firmly in first place and it looks like he's aware, and treating this as endgame. If I can't stop his military, then he'll cripple or kill me, swing around and cripple HK, and that'll be concession time. I've spent a bit of time thinking how I got here, and I want to share that analysis. I think that Ellimist has played well. He's expanded, he's taken some risks and gotten full benefit from them, and he's using Manors absolutely awesomely. But it's hard to say that he earned first place and the likely victory, given the lair luck so far. He's gotten good luck, it seems, while Selrahc was destroyed and HK crippled. At a minimum - if the Illians and Elves were still serious threats, he wouldn't be able to divert this much from growing to war. I think I'm only in 2nd because I was lucky with my lairs - particularly the super early Sage. Looking back at my play, I'm not impressed. But given how much I can attribute to luck - well, it applies to Ellimist too, surely? I like having skeletons and lizards to keep an honest military, but the lair dice seem to be outweighing our actual play. My suboptimal decisions only knocked me down to second. Aside from the unguarded lairs (which I did vote for), I like the map a lot, and I hope Merovech makes more of these. Ironically, given my pregame self assessment, I'm fairly happy with my micro, but not my macro. Given my overall goals, I think I executed them pretty well. And I could have done even better if I played in the evenings instead of in the mornings while rushing to work. The cities I chose, were all preroaded, and had workers on hand to improve the best tiles very quickly. I pretty consistently had my cities working the right tiles, including several tile swaps between cities. I haven't had many times I've worked unimproved tiles, nor too many improved but unworked tiles, except when my macro game dictated it. But, that macro. Man, have I made some blunders. I overbuilt workers, and underbuilt military, early. Too many worker turns wasted running from the barbs, not enough scouting info. If I'd been better about keeping the barbs under control, I might not have had to crash build so much when the Griffon showed up, either. I didn't push expansion as hard as I ought to have. Once I got the barbs under control, I regularly had too many improved tiles for the size of my population. I delayed Education far far too long. Relying on the desert incense and gems for commerce instead of an earlier Education was a bad idea; it let Ellimist catch up in GNP. It also really gimped my core cities for that period where they grew beyond the resources and I couldn't give them cottages. My dotmapping was poor. I settled my 2nd city for commerce specials rather than the more appropriate role of food and hammers. It meant my 2nd city was never able to push out workers and settlers and military like a proper 2nd city. Instead it spent the game as a mediocre commerce city and secondary unit pump. I could still salvage it with a Spring adept - but really, that mostly means it shouldn't have been settled until I could Spring it. Or at least until I needed the resources. It'd have been a pretty decent 4th city. I also avoided the jungle way more than I should have. Although Elli's griffon did have a bit of influence there :P - I had the worker turns, and that was green, irrigated land. Shouldn't have built Loki that early. Despite my pre-game planning, he ended up being a lost settler in exchange for 2 Inspirations. The settler would have done me much more good - at least if I had my other priorities straight. Or maybe Loki early would have worked, if I'd had an early Edu and hence sent him off scouting much earlier. I put way too much investment into Slavery, without settling the cities that could have benefitted from it. There just weren't the extreme food surpluses I needed to try it when I was working desert gems and a lot of plains cottages. Nor did I need the happiness from Orc slaves - pretty much because of the food surplus issue - but I've never been happiness constrained in any of my cities the whole game so far. I built several Smokehouses, and researched Philosophy, and never really got any benefit from any of that. At the very least I should have delayed all the Slavery investment more, if not cut it entirely. I didn't invest in GPP early enough, although here at least I did better than I have in previous games. I could easily have beaten Ellimist to the Drama bard, for just one example, but it was an afterthought for me, not a plan. This is another case where I didn't settle for enough food; could easily have had several specialists running throughout the golden age if I had the greener cities first. The cottage econ, on the other hand, does seem to work. Ellimist had a period where he was ahead in GNP, but that was due more to my excessive delay in Education research than to the strength of aristocracy. I'm still basically even with him, and he's got more cities and bigger cities. I definitely want to try the Clowns again. I like all their bonuses, and I think my failures were general, not specific to the Clowns. If anything, I should have been further behind than I was.
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker
Not enough energy for a proper report tonight
 Fin/Arc/Rai this time. Cannot imagine a more pure 'make some mages and go stomp face' set. Of course it assumes we're not being stomped Adept progress:  Any questions?
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker Quote:What is the average airspeed velocity of a swallow?Laden or unladen?  Found three triremes and a galley this turn. Pictures of them tonight, assuming I've still got energy. IF that's all, then I should handle this invasion with ease. I suspect it's just a vanguard, though - Elli's got too much Power for this to be everything. And I'd send triremes ahead myself, in his shoes, since they're slower. Need to count tiles tonight, see how long I have. It's looking like he'll show up when Sorcery finishes, plus or minus a turn, so I think I'd probably better make a Death node and give up on Meta until later. If I beat him back, I can grab the bear node fairly easily, even if I have to slaughter all the bears. If I don't...well, then I won't care anymore, will I? Unfortunately for me, there are no single paths en route to me. Not even at the end; the strip of coastal tiles is at least 2 wide. So I can't force him to attack me. I ought to be able to at least slow him down, though. Time is my friend, when I'm racing toward Sorcery. Maybe I can force him to go the long way around an island or attack my fleet. I've had my galleys exploring the shipwrecks. Not sure there's anything that would make a difference at this point, but hey, it's worth a shot. And if it's a Kraken spawn, maybe that's even good luck? Be interesting to see if he declares on me this turn. If he doesn't, I can shadow his force all the way home, or race it home and have one more ship with a Buccaneer crew. If he does - then I probably kill his griffon, and have decent odds of killing a trireme while defending (7 vs 6.5 isn't a battle I'd choose, but I needed the info, and I could get lucky).
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker
Anything a-happening?
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Not a whole lot going on just yet. I thought, counting tiles, that I'd see Ellimist's fleet this turn, but it hasn't shown up. Sorcery is due next turn, so it's looking likely that we can at least use Spectres for the war. Just been building troops and rearranging them. If he waits much longer, I'll swap back from warriors to Adepts.
Next research - probably Masonry to Construction; if we're going to be fighting on land, I want bridges. Then Sanitation?    Edit: Oh, and we explored the shipwrecks, found a Drown and a Barb Pirate.
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker |
