Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Sorry so quiet here today, turn never made its way around and I was busy with the holiday. I'll take a look at the dotmap and our goals probably tomorrow.

By the by, since I may never actually get around to posting the chat log, here's my take on the Nicolae situation (who we do still owe an email reply if one of you gents is feeling frisky):

• Nicolae resents us for the NAP still, probably supposing we got him to fold on a bluff. (We actually had pocket Kings I think, but nevermind.)
  
• Nicolae really doesn't give a shit about the Balseraph leaders reputation and doesn't find PBEM17 as slimy as most of us did in the lurker thread.
  
• Nicolae isn't very good at FFH and mostly just blames that on the mod, not himself.
  
• Nicolae's going to attack us. We can maybe point him towards the clowns should the clown runaway become more obvious, but even that is doubtful. He's going to attack us.
  

By the by, this is mostly just me using my "werewolf" skills, he didn't really say much in the chat, but his tone and what he didn't say says a whole lot.

I'll catch up on the rest tomorrow.

[Ravus Sol]

I think your version of quiet isn't the same as everyone elses!

[Gaspar]

Turn's in. Don't have a chance to play at this second, but there is a barb heading south toward the capital, so a warrior build in the cap is pretty much a must. More later.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Do you know what the lurkers haven’t seen in the last 24 hours? A good, old fashioned PANIC!!!

Panic over! It turns out that the Hippus have actually grabbed Code of Laws for their classical tech, and immediately adopted Aristocracy. That does mean that we can expect a significant jump in their GNP.

On further reflection, I can't actually tell if Horseback Riding is a Classical Tech.

Turn's in. Don't have a chance to play at this second, but there is a barb heading south toward the capital, so a warrior build in the cap is pretty much a must. More later.

Dammit!! Resume panicking!

I think you can only get a one turn warrior by sacrificing some commerce or taking a little hit in the food stores. Might be better to do a 2turn-1turn anyway?

[Gaspar]

Panic over! It turns out that the Hippus have actually grabbed Code of Laws for their classical tech, and immediately adopted Aristocracy. That does mean that we can expect a significant jump in their GNP.

On further reflection, I can't actually tell if Horseback Riding is a Classical Tech.



Dammit!! Resume panicking!

I think you can only get a one turn warrior by sacrificing some commerce or taking a little hit in the food stores. Might be better to do a 2turn-1turn anyway?

Indeed the Hippus have adopted Aristocracy. Those Financial Aristofarms are going to be nice so early. On the flipside, at 2 cities, Aristocracy really isn't that great. Regardless, I think we're going to need to chat with the Hippus about the future of our two empires sometime soon. If we can dogpile the Painted Face Menace, then that would be good. If they're after our empire to attain land parity, well...

By the by, screw you Ravus. Did you really need to put us right between the zombies and horses? Surely that would have been a better spot for the Elohim and their better worldspell? :P

Enough whining. I'm 99% sure that a certain unnamed player is going to win this game, so let's not worry about that. We'll have fun and then when we die, hopefully we can keep the band together and play another game. I'd like to line-up a FFH PBEM that's a little bit more focused on things like roleplay, because playing around with the stoner/wrestling/elvish/junk food themes has been the most fun of this game for me. Dealing with min/max'ers in a game like FFH2 just doesn't hold the same appeal. Anyway... on to the turn.

Another 6 points for <redacted>.

This turns major dilemma involves The Chronic. Doritos was born in the capital, and we have a barbarian warrior 4N of the city center. With only 1 warrior currently at home after Barry Horowitz heroically aided the Ogre effort, we have to build a warrior. I'd actually suggest two, before moving on. Safety first I always say!

On the current tile configuration in the capital, we have a 7 food surplus which will be wasted, as we can't grow into unhappiness with no easy way on the horizon to eliminate it, are earning 27 bpt and 8 hpt, which means 7T to Hunting and 2T to a warrior. Now I can fire the scientist, go max hammers, and get the warrior in 1T, but as I'm not actually all that worried about the Barbarian, I've decided to go for this unbelievably ghetto configuration, which works 2 crappy riverside grassland hill 1/1/1 tiles, keeps the scientist, and gets a 2T warrior followed by a 1T warrior while cutting Huntings time down to 6T. Right now, tech is biggest bottleneck IMO and so its worth doing embarrassing things like this while we wait for more cottages to come online.



We also finished our first farm at Hash Pipe, so we swap to working that which slows down the Elder Council but speeds up growth to 2T.

Here's an overview shot for those who need a visual on the warrior:



And lastly, here's demos, where the current configuration sees GNP surge. Look at that 58 crop yield.



By the by, I read in someone else's spoiler thread that mackoti posted in his here that FFH is more fun to lurk than play. While I think there's some truth to that, I also think its probably more to the point that the early turns are truly painful. Only in the last 10T or so have we had anything at all to do beyond pick a tile improvement to work every 5 turns and then mash enter. But I think FFH is a lot of fun if you play it in the spirit its intended, and not with a big temper or min/max'ing, and just have fun. I do think we might be better off in game without Doviello/Clan just to go ahead and start 1 era in, or even better, if there were a start option where you just started with worker techs and nothing else. Anyway, thats the turn.

[NobleHelium]

The new adept game configuration could definitely speed up the early game considerably.

[Gaspar]

The new adept game configuration could definitely speed up the early game considerably.

Yeah, I gave it a thought but I'm not ready for a new game yet. Have to wait til either PB4 or god forbid this go belly up for me (pretty sure PBEM14 has several months left yet.)

[Man Behind the Mask]

I think it’s safe to say that I’m pretty much in agreement on the points above that I’ve not touched on here.

Indeed the Hippus have adopted Aristocracy. Those Financial Aristofarms are going to be nice so early.

It’s a fairly pure beeline for them, only picking up Animal Husbandry and one other tech (probably Exploration, but maybe Crafting) on the way. Makes sense for a financial civ, but Aristocracy will slow foodhammer units and it means he’s got a way to go for any Great Person action.

By the by, screw you Ravus. Did you really need to put us right between the zombies and horses? Surely that would have been a better spot for the Elohim and their better worldspell? :P

OK, I can’t take it any more!! I’ve been calm up to now, but I’m finally gonna flip my lid about the map issue that’s been most bothering me. Where is the incense, Ravus? Seriously… where is it?!?! :mad: Lacking incense and reagents is a pretty big problem if we make it to the late game, as we can’t upgrade any High Priests or Archmages, but that is a long way off. However, multiple temples are great as a Spiritual civ, but they only give us a full return if we’ve got incense for the extra happiness. I can cope with us needing to create our own commerce, but we really don’t have enough resources to play with – we haven’t even got anything to trade to somebody else for what we seriously need. [/Rant]

We also finished our first farm at Hash Pipe

A farm and our second cottage both completed. Go-go Elven workers! Well, maybe “Go-slow”, but you get my point.

playing around with the stoner/wrestling/elvish/junk food themes has been the most fun of this game for me.

On this note, I think I can get at least nine upcoming units from a naming theme that starts with… Terra Ryzing.

And lastly, here's demos, where the current configuration sees GNP surge.

Someone has grown into unhappiness, which is a bit odd. It’s possible they might be planning to hook up a resource or add a freak show in the next couple of turns.

[Gaspar]

I think it’s safe to say that I’m pretty much in agreement on the points above that I’ve not touched on here.


It’s a fairly pure beeline for them, only picking up Animal Husbandry and one other tech (probably Exploration, but maybe Crafting) on the way. Makes sense for a financial civ, but Aristocracy will slow foodhammer units and it means he’s got a way to go for any Great Person action.


OK, I can’t take it any more!! I’ve been calm up to now, but I’m finally gonna flip my lid about the map issue that’s been most bothering me. Where is the incense, Ravus? Seriously… where is it?!?! :mad: Lacking incense and reagents is a pretty big problem if we make it to the late game, as we can’t upgrade any High Priests or Archmages, but that is a long way off. However, multiple temples are great as a Spiritual civ, but they only give us a full return if we’ve got incense for the extra happiness. I can cope with us needing to create our own commerce, but we really don’t have enough resources to play with – we haven’t even got anything to trade to somebody else for what we seriously need. [/Rant]

Well, I'm of two minds here. Clearly, this start is darn near unwinnable. We have 2 happiness resources in what would be described as "our" lands, 1 covered by jungle which requires a tech that is clearly not a priority for our civ and the other the single worst happiness resource in the game, not doubled by anything and with a terrible tile yield. And we're spritual with no incense, which sucks for all the reasons MBTM just described. The area that's supposed to be ours is just tragically bad with the exception of RoP.

That said, despite the teasing that's been going since the setup thread, I don't blame Ravus. He was put in a tough situation - roll a map, fast, and oh by the way, all the people who could normally vet your map for you are dedlurking. I've seen first hand how this map balancing situation goes - everyone focuses on big stuff, and if a start "looks" okay, they leave it alone. We've got lots of trees, and we're most likely to grab RoP, there's some food there, hey, gold's a really good tile good thing we jungled it, blah blah blah and anyway, we can go GoN. That's how this happens. I'm not angry at Ravus or the lurkers, I'm just realistic that I think the best we can do with it is be entertaining, particularly as we start to get a handle on what some of the other starts look like. Regardless, while I hang onto the solemn right of the players to whine about the map, I think Ravus did the best he could, and the map looks entertaining in other ways.

[Gaspar]

Definitely need more hijinks in this thread...

Somebody got their Great Sage just a couple of turns after ours. Score increases: Runaway Winner (21), Grigori (5), Elohim (5). Rawkking is still on 2 cities like us, Nicolae still hasn't settled his second.

The warrior moved SW onto the hill west of the pigs. Certainly, across a river our jobbers will have great odds, but if the warrior moves to cover the corn, I'll see about attacking out to save the slow worker turns. Butterfinger and Cheetos are working on a new cottage, while Almond Joy moved to finish the farm he started before he became Ogre bait. Doritos is en route to Hash Pipe to assist the terraforming there.

Hunting is due in 5T. My current thought process for tech path is AH (5), WotF (12), Calendar (4), Crafting (4), Mining (6), Bronze Working (12), Philosophy (8), Priesthood (24). But I'm pretty negotiable on everything after the first two. Obviously all of that will slow down and then speed up, slowing down as we work higher yield foodhammer tiles building workers and settlers that also have lower commerce, then speeding up as cottages get laid down and start maturing and other cities get settled.



Demos: