Auric Ulvin restores winter to Erebus [SPOILERS]

[Ellimist]

Okay, Turn 78 was an interesting one...




It looks like Seven will be facing five lizardmen this turn, and probably another lizardman and a skeleton the following turn. I had to make some unanticipated adjustments to build a warrior this turn and last turn, and here's the result:




So I'll have a total of four warriors defending the city this turn, two of which should have excellent odds and the other two aren't bad either. The main loss is the worker disruption, as well as not being able to risk any of these warriors to attack out for more exp.

My other cities are developing fine, I suppose. My empire is definitely falling behind on expansion but is not exactly stagnant either. The barbarian pressure and relying on whipped monuments has definitely had an effect.

Here's the latest monument whip in my city of Eleven:




I'm not sure what the best way to develop a city like this is. Building improvements over ice is painfully slow:




Hopefully that will just add to the pain when I perform the Deepening ritual. We'll see.

My capital, Two:




I know early commerce is often a bad bet, but I didn't feel like I really had a choice and good land wasn't available when I needed it to be.

Three:




This city feels weak, but I didn't expect the workrate penalty and I needed a city that could put up units.

Five:




This city is basically just babysitting these cottages for now. I'm planning to put Heron Throne in it so that it will only be 81% useless later.

[Ellimist]

Here are the demographics, which summarize my position pretty well I think:




And here are the limits of what five dead scouts have been able to discover so far:




Seven's Hunters (when I'm permitted to finally build them) should make a huge difference, since they can not only remove the bears but also eliminate my need for all these monuments and possibly Slavery itself. I very much need a better way to handle these bears in order to explore and expand in that direction. That Lizardman ruin should also go down easy once it isn't surrounded by bears, and that would eliminate a lot of the pressure I've been operating under.

Gaining access to the land in that area is one of my biggest goals right now. I can't even explore it yet, which limits me to more marginal terrain.

[flugauto]

Still no priests of winter?

[Ellimist]

Still no priests of winter?

I can't afford them. 268 hammers is a lot right now for something that has only marginal benefits to expansion. My capital during GodKing would have needed 11 turns to complete the ritual, and I didn't see a way to do that as well as my other priorities. I'm falling behind on adding and growing new cities, and only took a break from that for a limited number of turns to reach size 11(which I used to build Deruptus.) In hindsight, I would have preferred to avoid settling on top of the horse with Two, but I had no way of knowing at the time.

PoW were one reason I got Philosophy as early was I did, but so far warriors have been a more cost effective substitute for my security needs. I haven't met any of my neighbors yet, so they won't help as a warfare/diplomacy tool, either.

Once I can start taming these bears and exploring the area to the north, I'll be able to start working on the lairs. At that point, my production will have improved with the development of Seven and Eleven, and Priests(and adepts) should be more affordable.

[Mardoc]

Yeah, a little extra happiness doesn't really make up for no other econ traits. You really have to rely on using Ice Mana to punch above your weight, or else on Temples to let you keep expanding after all the good land is taken.

[Ellimist]

Yeah, a little extra happiness doesn't really make up for no other econ traits. You really have to rely on using Ice Mana to punch above your weight, or else on Temples to let you keep expanding after all the good land is taken.

Yeah, we'll see. The Illian economic benefits seem to derive from Stasis and the Deepening.

[Ellimist]

Turn 79.

It looks like my lizards were smarter than the average barbarians.




I don't know what's going on here. I haven't seen ANY lizardmen from that direction all game long, and all of a sudden four(and now a fifth) have appeared. I can't understand why these lizardmen stacked up like this or why they changed their mind about which city to attack. Their behavior doesn't make much sense; my best theory is that there's an isolated lizard lair somewhere southeast of me and my scout somehow woke them up. (but that doesn't account for their target-switching movements)

I took care of a few of them this turn. The battles went slightly better than expected; all but two of them were at decent odds, and I killed one at 35%.




There's a risk of losing eleven this turn, which would be pretty inconvenient to deal with even if I'm able to quickly recapture it. The city just barely managed to complete a warrior by borrowing copper from the capital and running a food deficit. I'm hoping my 5 exp warrior and the newly produced warrior can hold out vs 3 lizards without a terrain advantage.




I'm planning to bring the orthus axe toward Seven soon, along with the warrior that killed him and got a ridiculous amount of exp for it. Once I get some breathing room, I'm planning to clear out the nearby lizardman lair and settle some new cities in that region.

[Ellimist]

The lizard invasion was ended just as weirdly as it started. They decided not to attack my city (again), and this time moved themselves into a position on flat ground surrounded by my warriors.

In foreign affairs since then, Averax the Cambion from Military Strategy was born shortly after Form of the Titan was built. I haven't been paying any significant attention to demographics, so I'll just assume that HidingKneel got them both.

The scoreboard seems to indicate that three of us are all about even while DaveV is lagging behind and HidingKneel seems to be a runaway. While HidingKneel is a competent player, I'm not sure if he knows how to turn an advantage into a victory. In addition, the late-era Hippus military isn't as powerful as the rest of us can manage.

[Ellimist]

The lucky/unlucky city of Thirteen was founded this turn in the shadow of the Barrow-Wraith. This should be a solid city once it's been set up and (probably) covered in ice.




After Sanitation, I spent the next turns getting Writing, and now I'm refilling my gold while Two builds a library.




Here's my first hunter. Killing a skeleton with the Orthus Axe was worth 4 exp and now he'll start dealing with the bears. My second hunter finished this turn, and Hawks may be a good investment as well.

[Bobchillingworth]

Having recently finally bothered to look at a save, as Ellimist's Secret Dedilurker I feel compelled to bump his thread with the following points:


* Holy crap this map is huge.


* The game concept was my idea


* I have no idea if Sareln lurks this thread and/or is still working on EitB v10, but if you do- there's something weird going on with Illian Assassin invisibility. Using the "Snowblind" ability gives them a persistent Hidden promotion, which is totally awesome and working as expected. Trying to detect them with the "Revelation" spell causes some interesting bugs, however. In a test game I found that having a Empyrean priest cast the spell while surrounded by four invisible Illian Assassins revealed them all, but only after a strange several-second delay. Then on the following turn only two Assassins were visible, even though for the Illian player each needed to have Snowblind recast. Playing subsequent turns showed that the four Assassins alternated seemingly randomly between visible and invisible states. A rare scenario I know, but a curiosity regardless. Figured I'd post about it here instead of the EitB development subforum, since I don't want to give away anything.