Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Yeah I tried to burn jungle with ritualists in PBEM2 to convert it to forest. It takes forever.

Also clearly you guys need to explore more lairs instead of spamming the thread so much.

Freakin' lurkers. Only happy when our nascent civilization is on the edge of destruction and I'm panicking hilariously. :P Anyway, we have a new turn, how fun.

Score increases: Nicolae (5, pop.) Brian must be researching something crazy. He hasn't had a score increase in roughly forever.

Brawler continues his trek towards RoP. Because the turns are so boring, I decided to take a slight risk and have Lanny discover new territory. There's another mana node nearby. Curse all this jungle.



Almost forgot to hire a scientist. The new tile configuration shaves a turn off the Settler and keeps our research rate the same. So the Settler completes on T42 and Education will come in on T45, while the GSage comes in T51. Here's the view inside The Chronic:



I could change the configuration slightly to emphasize hammers to get the God King bonus rather than using food tiles which provide more commerce, but it doesn't actually add up to enough to change the settler's arrival date. If I fire the scientist, I can get the settler in 7, but that configuration brings Education up to 14 turns, and I think we need cottages more than we need the new city one turn sooner.

That's all the news fit to print. We're going to have to work to make the next 10 turns or so interesting.

[Mardoc]

I could change the configuration slightly to emphasize hammers to get the God King bonus rather than using food tiles which provide more commerce, but it doesn't actually add up to enough to change the settler's arrival date. If I fire the scientist, I can get the settler in 7, but that configuration brings Education up to 14 turns, and I think we need cottages more than we need the new city one turn sooner.

That's all the news fit to print. We're going to have to work to make the next 10 turns or so interesting.

Well - for the first time all game, *every tile* worked is an improved tile! That's...that's newsworthy, right?

Still going to be tricky to get out enough workers to cottage at a respectable pace, but at least we've got things under control for the moment with just the one worker.

[Gaspar]

Well - for the first time all game, *every tile* worked is an improved tile! That's...that's newsworthy, right?

Still going to be tricky to get out enough workers to cottage at a respectable pace, but at least we've got things under control for the moment with just the one worker.

Only took 34 turns. Slow ass elven workforce.

I think it goes without saying we're going to have to push workers very hard to make sufficient cottaging to get our real economy going. I think that's okay, since there's really nothing else to build other than settlers and military at the moment, and there's still no threat that's worthy of a heavy military push just yet. Probably aim to get up to a half a dozen workers then push settlers while letting the RoP site build our military for a while. Still have the better part of 10 turns before we have to make that decision, however.

[Commodore]

Clearly, the needs of entertainment and security must be served together. Pop more lairs near the flaming zombie boy!

[Man Behind the Mask]

Because the turns are so boring, I decided to take a slight risk and have Lanny discover new territory.

LURKERS REJOICE! We have a cliffhanger!

Nicolae warned us of a dreaded, deadly, giant spider which cruelly consumed his scout to the south west of our fair city. Leaping Lanny, fully one quarter of the elven military, has now taken his life in his hands by possibly venturing close to this invisible monstrosity.

Let the panic begin! :thumbsdow

[Gaspar]

LURKERS REJOICE! We have a cliffhanger!

Nicolae warned us of a dreaded, deadly, giant spider which cruelly consumed his scout to the south west of our fair city. Leaping Lanny, fully one quarter of the elven military, has now taken his life in his hands by possibly venturing close to this invisible monstrosity.

Let the panic begin! :thumbsdow

Now you're making me feel silly. My vague recollection of the last sight of Nicolae's scout was SW of the Tomb of Sucellus. If his spider did get killed there, we've seen the last of Leaping Lanny. I am just too damned impulsive.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Now you're making me feel silly.

And now I feel bad. Sorry. You were supposed to react to the potential disaster a little more like this.

I was thinking that we’d actually be ok, but those bloodthirsty onlookers didn’t know that. Didn’t want you to risk it again next turn, though.

The Sheaim scout was skirting the borders during the Dancing Bahamet Era… back when interesting stuff was keeping that trigger-finger less itchy . Screenshots only pick the scout up on the minimap, so it could have been further west at last sight. I also don’t know when he died; Nicolae said “scout got eaten by a giant spider while I was attempting to defog the area between our capitals”. Could even be close to the Pyre for all I really know. We’d need to check the Power graph in-game to make a better estimate.

Jungle hill gives a reasonable defensive bonus, so a kind RNG could leave Lanny alive even if he’s in the danger zone.

[Gaspar]

Well, all silly panic aside, a fairly mundane turn.

Score increases: Rawkking (6, pop)

Leaping Lanny survived, and retreated inside friendly borders. The Brawler moved towards RoP, and saw a lizardman on the ruins. We'll try and figure out if the barrow is also guarded by a skeleton next turn, but we'll clearly need more force than just our jobbers to clear that out.



Other than, nothing new. Worker started on another farm, which will give us more options when we hit the heavy worker production phase of our plan. Nicolae has passed us on power, so I'm guessing he has 5 warriors. Probably will aim to camp Lanny on the hill at the river bend eventually, while the Brawler will aim to hang out at the new city site after investigating the barrow situation.

If there's anything anyone would like to see, let me know.

[Mardoc]

Well, all silly panic aside

When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

Leaping Lanny survived, and retreated inside friendly borders. The Brawler moved towards RoP, and saw a lizardman on the ruins. We'll try and figure out if the barrow is also guarded by a skeleton next turn, but we'll clearly need more force than just our jobbers to clear that out.

Yes. And thank the trees for that! Otherwise your button pushing finger would get itchy, I'm sure .

On the other hand, if BB fortifies on a convenient spot (maybe the hill 1W of the remnants? Or better, the forest hill 1 SE of the city site) he could likely farm both for XP, and coincidentally keep them out of our land.

Probably will aim to camp Lanny on the hill at the river bend eventually, while the Brawler will aim to hang out at the new city site after investigating the barrow situation.

Um, which river bend? I see several .

If there's anything anyone would like to see, let me know.

Millions of dollars in an anonymous Swiss bank accout?

Some idea how well Nicolae's doing on GNP and food and production, actually. Maybe his capital city size. We're pretty sure he took a non-optimal tech path and builds - is that starting to show up in demos?

[Man Behind the Mask]

No weak attempts at humour or lurker entertainment from me today. So after a brief comment on the turn we’re back to our favourite topic of paranoid speculation.

Leaping Lanny survived, and retreated inside friendly borders. The Brawler moved towards RoP, and saw a lizardman on the ruins. We'll try and figure out if the barrow is also guarded by a skeleton next turn, but we'll clearly need more force than just our jobbers to clear that out.

I assume that barb spawns are affected by difficulty level, but even then it does seem surprising that there isn’t a bigger band of lizards romping around in that valley. I hope the Brawler finds the barrow similarly defended.

***

I’ve done a quick review of the thread to try to consolidate some of the C&D for my own sanity. I might have something worth sharing next week once I’ve lumped in the demographics info. I’m now in a better position to share thoughts about what’s been going on outside our peninsula.

With the glorious elven nation comfortably atop the scoreboard, I think we should spare some quick consideration for the people at the other extreme – the Elohim. Gaspar made a comment a while ago about Brian not having a score increase in “forever” so I’ve tracked back to see what’s been going on. The Elohim settled late, probably went warrior first (Pop increased on Turn 7) and grabbed a tech on Turn 10 as we did. After that, it looks like worker (next pop growth not until Turn 22) and a more expensive tech which came in on Turn 25. Since then… no change to their score in the last 10 turns! It looks like he’s got a coastal capital (first ring land points were 12 to everybody else’s 14, and second ring were 14 to other civ’s 19). Given what else we know, what could be going on?
[INDENT]a) Brian is after an expensive tech. This could be Education, but it does seems very strange that he’s not grown his capital past size 3 if he’s focussed on research.
b) We know that somebody has A LOT of soldiers. It could be that Brian is suffering under a painful choke, can’t grow his city or make any headway in improving his land. However, the Elohim have a rather handy worldspell which makes suffering under a choke fairly unlikely.
c) We know that somebody has A LOT of soldiers. If that somebody is Brian, he could be building a second settler at a small city size, confident that he can defend the site. His research would be low as he pays for the soldier upkeep, slowing his tech rate.[/INDENT]

All other speculation is welcome, and he’ll probably leap up in score next turn to prove all this pondering wrong. If the Elohim do have the huge army, then that is a concern. Tolerant would be a very handy trait to have if you’ve got the capital of your nearest neighbour to play with in the first 50 turns.

Gaspar, it might be helpful to have a shot of the top cities screen, in case I can’t check out the turn. Based on the population increases, I’m wondering if somebody hasn’t settled a second city already.