The Kuriotates: A Tale of Centaurs, Hubris, and Unbridled Enthusiasm

[Mardoc]

True. But my previous sim was using just centaurs, and most of our losses were taken when Bob had units that weren't hit very hard by the Mercurian worldspell. If we use Basium/paladins to pick those off first, things ought to look better.

Honestly, my worry is that turn before we strike. Try as I might, I can't see how to get the initiative unless we use only Centaurs. And, well, Big H and Beasts and Mardero all ought to have pretty decent odds when fighting in Hell, even against Paladins. Especially if they're rusted first.

I'm inclined to think the opposite. Once Plako and Ilios are out of their golden ages, our jewelers are finished, and Commodore's picking up the tab for our expenses, I think we'll be teching faster than anyone (even with the research penalty). In manufacturing, the Kuriotates will never catch up to Ilios and his ten cities. But the Kuriotate/Mercurian team very well might. Especially considering that most of our builds from now on give two units for the price of one. We're also the only civ that will be able to pull off this tower of divination trick, and we get to do it twice. That'll give us the earliest access to top-tier units, and we get to build twice as many of them as anyone else.

Well...it might be possible. Republic Enclaves, run through Tailor/Jeweler, through Academy + Library, will be extremely efficient. And we're about 20-30 turns from that point, which will be double or so our current GNP.

That 30% tech penalty hurts badly, though. And I'm not that certain that golden ages will end soon enough. But...granted, the GA's do mean we want the game to last a long time for now.

So I say build. We'll finish our jewelers this turn. I'm thinking Kwythellar can start a forge, one of our other cities can rebuild our workforce, and the other can get started building settlers. We ought to be able to get a Mercurian city out every two or three turns, and enough improvements to make them instantly productive. I think the best use of our centaurs will be as a mobile, flexible garrison for the new holdings.

I have no objection whatsoever to building. I'd just hoped we could find a way to do both simultaneously, with the forces we already have. I'd really prefer for our military to spend its time defending us preemptively, than defending us by reacting.

Question: how do golden ages work on a team? Do we share them?

No, only one civ gets the benefits. Saw that in PB6. On the other hand..Commodore should have a fresh GPP counter, if I understand correctly. Possibly incremented once due to our Prophet.

Also: as an alternative to hunting/animal handling for hawks, how about sorcery -> build metamagic node in Selrahc's land (after we unlock the ToDs) for floating eyes? Seems like it unlocks a lot more for us. And later we can dispel our mind node and replace it with something having more military applications, like body or enchantment.

If we can claim the node, this is definitely better. It might already be occupied, though.

[HidingKneel]

If we can claim the node, this is definitely better. It might already be occupied, though.

It isn't far from Commodore's capital, so it might be worth expanding in that direction fairly soon (along with all the other directions ). And if it is, well, there's always . Or we could push Thoth back to his island, and claim his mana node instead.

[HidingKneel]

Honestly, my worry is that turn before we strike. Try as I might, I can't see how to get the initiative unless we use only Centaurs. And, well, Big H and Beasts and Mardero all ought to have pretty decent odds when fighting in Hell, even against Paladins. Especially if they're rusted first.

A counter to that is to use centaurs to screen our paladins. Keep the paladins two tiles diagonally from the city, and put centaurs on the tile between.
Then Bob can't reach the paladins with any units other than Rosier, and can't rust them. He might kill a bunch of our centaurs, in exchange for weakening his own units (which won't benefit from fortification or defensive bonuses). Seems like a fair enough trade, if we were to go that route.

I'm still in favor of waiting, though.

[HidingKneel]

Played turn 86. Let's see, let's see:



Overcouncil stuff. Is it bad form to vote for yourself? I voted for myself .

Did another flyby of Bob:



He's rebuilt one of his beasts. Should take maybe another three turns to rebuild the others. Then maybe he comes for us again? We'll see. Note he generated a great sage this turn. I'll bet he wanted an engineer for the bone palace. Anyways, a sage is still useful to him. According to the tech screen, he's got agriculture now. The only reason he'd research agriculture is if he was heading toward education. Which should make him quite a bit more dangerous. But he won't be getting more dangerous nearly as quickly as we are.

Wonder what that savant is for? Hope he's not planning on spreading AV with it.

So, since we seem to be mistform-free, it's time to stir up some more trouble. I picked another centaur that was 1xp away from promotion to explore the dungeon that caused us so much grief:



It owes us! Maybe we'll get another great engineer, so we can rush the Bone Palace ourselves.

Hey, check this out:



The barbarians sure know a good piece of land when they see it. When it pops borders, it can work two gold mines, three corn farms. Plus cows and a windmill for production. It's still size 1, so we can't conquer it just yet.
But it'll be an easy conquest: guarded by only two "weak" archers. We can probably handle that with two centaurs! Hopefully the AI has it working a corn tile, so it'll only take 5 turns to grow a size. Then we sweep in and claim it for the Mercurians . Wait, I mean .

Finished three jewelers at EOT, bringing Naggarond back into happiness and giving our GNP an enormous boost (went from ~200 beakers to ~250). That'll improve further next turn, when we get our silks back online.

So, time to plan for the future. Let's take a look at our supercities. Here's Kwythellar:



I think I'll build a forge there, should be done in five turns. After that, I'll build a couple more stonewardens while waiting for Commodore to spread Order to the city. Then we can get started on a temple of Order and confessors.

Here's Naggarond:



I'm thinking 3-turn settlers for the forseeable future. Can get the first one out at the end of turn 89. Want I should send it to the spot marked "C?", Commodore? I can have you a city there on turn 92.

Finally, Avelorn:



It can almost do 1-turn workers. First order of business is to rebuild our workforce. When we've got another half-dozen or so, it can get started on its own forge. Then we'll see.

Finally, some demographics for lurker viewing pleasure:



That GNP doesn't mean what it used to, due to our research penalty. But it's still pretty friggin' fantastic.

[Commodore]

That barb city looks darned tasty. Depending on what we want to do about Bob, Basium can probably head over there to get immortalized, assuming barbs still do the trick. Although maybe jumbo would do just as well:



Also shown; new theme. Thanks tvtropes, for listing the pantheon! That C mark ought to do very nicely for a third city, and then the barbarians will donate the fourth. As exciting as building three-turn settlers can be, we need lots and lots of workers, about two per new city ideally although with a little micro I can get by with a 3:2 ratio.

[HidingKneel]

As exciting as building three-turn settlers can be, we need lots and lots of workers, about two per new city ideally although with a little micro I can get by with a 3:2 ratio.

Oh, don't worry, I'll get you workers .

Actually I'm thinking to refine the plan a bit: let's go settler-first in Avelorn, and get your third city planted on turn 90. Avelorn can then spit out a train of workers to follow the settler (1 turn each), and get the spot improved in a hurry.

Naggarond can supply another city a few turns later. So pick a spot for it!

With the commerce boost and the ability to fiddle with the science slider, I suspect we can get Orders from Heaven out on turn 88.

Question: should we maybe add Military State to the list of civics that the Mercurians will adopt in their next revolt? If they're switching to consumption, the -10% military from apprenticeship will hurt. Plus city states-military state has a lot of synergy for building and maintaining a large military.

If that sounds good, we could do something like

Orders from Heaven -> Currency -> Sanitation -> Warfare -> Cartography

and pull the revolt shortly before turn 100. Which is around the time that you'll have expanded enough that God King loses its shine.

[Commodore]

Oh, yes please! If nothing else, I need rushbuy like a bad fix, stupid lack of granaries/whip. That's Mardoc's "extra use for money" right there. The only issue is if that puts a heavy crimp in the Druid plan. ToD take time to build, so I'm thinking it's fine.

[Mardoc]

I would still build a worker or two for Commodore ahead of the settler from Avelorn: for example, Junil's Justice is only three turns away from working an unimproved tile. Plus - we're ahead of our own needs, but eventually we'll need a team to build yet more cottages at home. Actually, looking at Kwythellar, we'll be back to unimproved tiles after the second growth if we don't keep workers in the area.

If possible, I would definitely leave the barb city for him, as well. He needs XP on Angels and kills on Basium much more than we need promotions on our centaurs. Especially if we want to take advantage of the various special Angel types. I'm just not sure what odds a Bronze Angel will have on an archer.

I agree with Warfare, Military State is a good civic in general, and it fits well with Commodore's anticipated role. And Warfare isn't particularly expensive. It's tempting to also aim to pick up Festivals, but I suppose that can wait a while yet. Not like we've got a lot of extra hammers at the moment.

On other topics: holy cow, Paladins make great support troops too! Medic II + Courage is a huge amount of healing. That's something we'll have to remember once KotE comes in, to put Courage on all our troops.

Also, if we're not going to be invading Bob soon, I would do more than look for enemies with the centaurs - I'd also fill in the world map, as much as possible. That'll give us a better handle on where to expand Commodore to, and also give us a handle on what Plako and Ilios have been up to. Probably do that without Sprinting, so that we can back away from any borders we run into.

[HidingKneel]

Turn 87 played! When Mardoc says this:

Also, if we're not going to be invading Bob soon, I would do more than look for enemies with the centaurs - I'd also fill in the world map, as much as possible. That'll give us a better handle on where to expand Commodore to, and also give us a handle on what Plako and Ilios have been up to. Probably do that without Sprinting, so that we can back away from any borders we run into.

Hiding Kneel hears this:

Our centaurs must be free to frolick in the fertile lands of Erebus. Feel free to send them out unattended, exploring dungeons and stirring up trouble.

So I did a little of that. First of all, there's that dungeon Bob wanted to explore, before he turned into a giant red monster:



I do suspect Thoth has one of his new cities down there! Maybe it's time to push him back to the island, if it wouldn't take too much force. Anyway, I started exploring that dungeon, and moved another centaur into position (out of Thoth's vision) to defend it.

There's also a dungeon over here:



Close to Commodore's territory. But Basium ought to be able to handle any bad things that come out of it.

Finally, I did a little more scouting around that barbarian city:



Whoah! Another epic dungeon for us! The first well gave us a great engineer. Let's hope this one gives us something comparably awesome.

Also visible in this screenshot: another barbarian city has popped up, just north of the first. That's essentially on top of Selrahc's old territory. So the world's getting blanketed in barbarian cities at exactly the right time for us to take advantage of it.

What else? Event log says Ilios's golden age is over. He's about to pull ahead of us in military, though.

I would still build a worker or two for Commodore ahead of the settler from Avelorn: for example, Junil's Justice is only three turns away from working an unimproved tile. Plus - we're ahead of our own needs, but eventually we'll need a team to build yet more cottages at home. Actually, looking at Kwythellar, we'll be back to unimproved tiles after the second growth if we don't keep workers in the area.

Commodore's building a farm there already, plus it can work the cows that Kilmorph's Kith is using now. By the time it's grown into those, the remnants of our old workforce should be on the scene (I'll stop to build one cottage for Kwythellar on the way; that ought to hold us for a long while, since we'll be growing at a snail's pace until we tech sanitation).

So I decided to start with a settler in Avelorn, due out at the end of next turn (will be followed by several 1-turn workers, who can immediately start improving the city). What's the next city name, Commodore? Lugus's Light?
Naggarond is working on a settler also, and Kwythellar on a forge.

Orders from Heaven due next turn. Looks like I'll have to turn the science slider down to avoid finishing it myself. We can use the surplus gold to pay for the remaining paladin upgrades (both stonewardens now have two promotions worth of passive xp ).

Screenshot from EOT:

[Qgqqqqq]

Ded-lurking (didn't post before as I didn't known this was active)
What was the old name of the thread?