Anyone up for an EitB SG?

[Lord Parkin]

Got the save, was flat-out yesterday so didn't have the chance to play. Expect to complete the turn in about 12 hours.

[haphazard1]

Good luck, Lord Parkin!

[Lord Parkin]

Sorry folks, didn't manage to squeeze it in earlier and now I'm exhausted and ready for bed. Feel free to skip straight to superjm, don't want to keep you waiting another day.

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry folks, didn't manage to squeeze it in earlier and now I'm exhausted and ready for bed. Feel free to skip straight to superjm, don't want to keep you waiting another day.

As Parkin has requested a skip the order is now:

Brian
Mr Cairo
Lord Parkin
superjm -------->> UP
haphazard1 ------->> ON DECK
DaveV

If I don't see a got it from superjm tomorrow, I'll give him a PM, just in case.

Work related exhaustion, Parkin?

[superjm]

I'll get the save later today, don't worry. Not actually on my computer right now.

[superjm]

Got the save

[superjm]

So the situation looks good. My current inclination is to forgo any rush shenanigans on the Hippus and allow them to at least build up a little bit so that if we do switch to them, we're not in a hopeless situation. I don't plan on peaceing them yet though.



Brian's dot map looks good for our immediate surrounding land, but all of it is completely uncontested, at least as long as Hippus remains crippled in their own cap. So my focus now is to grab these two spots to cut off their expansion up north. Well, not cut off completely but if Rhoanna wants to plant a city on that desert wasteland right next to Charadon then I'm not gonna stop her. The rightmost spot does force us to move one of Brian's dots, so it might be worth putting the city 1 west on the river instead.

I could settle the gold city on the hill east of the gold instead, but I'd rather give Rhoanna some room to breath and also claim the free fire mana in the desert. It also gives us a coastal spot on the western sea for what it's worth.

The plan is to move the first settler towards the west area with the gold. This is gonna take a bit of care though since animals are always a worry and it's a pretty long trek towards the gold. Fortunately thanks to the road built towards the Hippus it won't be too long.



Expansive is a fun trait.



Working on the settler now, and am moving four of our warriors to guard the settler's trek to the gold spot. The idea is get the warriors in position beforehand so that the settler can use its full movement through Hippus territory and then beyond to reach it. If Rhoanna gets any funny ideas about trying to advance I'll just peace her out.



IIRC elephants aren't aggressive, but it could be a thorn in my side if it decides to block my settler's path.



Rhoanna builds another warrior and moves it out. I'm not confident in my odds on defense even in the forest so I just step back and wait and see what Rhoanna does.



Further exploration reveals a goodie hut.



Rhoanna moves into the forest, so I divert one of my warriors to defend and hopefully deter Rhoanna from attacking. Seeing as she's more aggressive now it'll probably be best to peace her as soon as possible, but I want the settler past her first.



Free warrior! Not a bad result, though as you can see money might become a bit of an issue if we're not careful.



Well that's a problem. All I can hope is that I get the combat roll in my favor. C3+hills should give me what, 65-70%ish odds if I'm not completely blanking on something?



Blast it.

Oh well, nothing to be done there. Shame we lost such a highly promoted warrior on what I presume was a favorable matchup. Though I suppose I should be glad that Rhoanna didn't attack my forested warrior instead if my understanding of how the RNG works is correct.



Okay wait one dang second.



Someone needs to explain to me what could possibly be going on here in Rhoanna's cap. Where in the world is this culture coming from? Frankly if she's going to be dominating our culture like this then we may need to get a plan on killing her sooner rather than later.





So let's review. 50% for hills/forest+30% from woodsman+40% for C2+50% from an animal+25% from crossing a river from NW is 195% defense. And I lost.

This hasn't been a good session so far.



Oh looks like we have puppets in the game. Wonderful.



Finally a bit of luck as we get a monument in the cap. Hopefully this will alleviate some of... whatever Rhoanna's cap is doing.



The bear got a double promotion from killing my scout.



On a slightly more positive note, looks like Hippus is going to fun into some barb problems soon enough. The -10% science is pretty brutal but I am so glad we are not the ones having to deal with this.



Animal Husbandry finished and we have horses! Adjust your dotmaps accordingly. I put Crafting as my next tech and get another settler going.



Okay I guess.



Hippus cap has made 93 culture in six turns. Seriously, what even is this? The only thing that makes sense to me is that she got a bunch of captured animals early on because otherwise, I don't have a clue how you get this much culture this early.



I accidentally move the worker along with the settler group Wasted worker turn it is.

I'll be farming the flood plains and starting a road back to the cap until mining comes in. Maintenance will probably be an issue early on but the three commerce from the gold and improving the spices should alleviate that somewhat.

No hammers at all to start so I might as well just get a monument started until size 4 and then just get workers out I guess. Could do a granary as well, but I figured getting at least a source of early culture would be worthwhile.



I don't think I quite thought this through.



Um, no. Maybe if we weren't building settlers but 42 beakers seems pretty meager for that cost.



Hmmm.

Hmmmm?

Hmmmmmmmmm.




I mean, it was right there.



Starting a worker near the end of the session before going for the next settler. Feel free to switch out or get more warriors or whatever you feel is best.



Gargoyle incoming, hopefully to harass Rhoanna some more.

Looking at Charadon's land now, I can see how he's lowest score and mostly just flopping about doing nothing. He has nothing in his capital. The sheep and deer are okayish but he has exactly two commerce tiles to work. He can't even improve the deer until the expensive Hunting is researched, those two farms are laughably bad, and he has zero access to anything until he gets mining. I'd wager he's nowhere close to that. In the meantime I'm moving a warrior from the gold city to pillage those worthless farms for some extra gold.

I'd actually rather we switch to Rhoanna even in her current predicament. At least her capital has actual workable tiles and whatever she's doing for culture is working on well for her. Charadon just looks completely helpless.



He does have what looks like a decent city out east so it's not all bad I suppose.



And here's the game as of the end of Turn 65.

End-of-session thoughts:
-Losing both of those animal combats really miffs me. That promoted warrior would have been a really nice unit to have in future engagements and that scout was clearly on the way to Subdue.
-I think settling those two cities was the right move given the circumstances. With those cities secure we can easily backfill all the land behind us. We'll get to mining quicker (I hope at least) so we can start clearing out all those blasted forests and start getting a real economy going.
-Rhoanna's ridiculous capital culture is annoying but it's not blocking anything too important and with how crippled she is I doubt she'll present much of an issue as long as we remain on guard and keep our defenses stout.
-If Doviello was behind-the-curve before, he's definitely in a bad spot now after our war dec. Though honestly, he looks pretty screwed either way.
-There are bears like crazy up in the north. Definitely worth sending another scout up there just to try for Subdue again.
-Barbs are coming in fast and strong, so Rhoanna will have her hands full for a while. Not my problem.
-Keep an eye out for Loki so we can murder him hard.

You're up Parkin.

EDIT: You know what, it just came to me. Hippis probably got the Great Bard event early and settled it. This would also explain why her cap stalled at 2 pop for so long even while building warriors; the 5 unhappy was crippling her growth.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the detailed report, superjm! Looks pretty decent overrall, despite some less-than-fantastic combat luck. But not much to be done about that. Scouts just have such low base strength, even with a ton of bonus modifiers they have a sizable chance of dying.

That science event was pretty bad; 42 beakers? I guess it would scale with later techs to be much larger, and maybe worth doing. But at this point in the game, no way.

Hippus capital...your theory sounds good to me. That much culture being pumped out is a real pain for us, though. We will have to keep a close eye on the Hippus, and maybe do something about them. Our newest city could get swamped by their culture.

Hmmm, the clown show is out there somewhere, along with their ultra-annoying puppet. Well, we can deal with that if we have to; who knows, it might become our ultra-annoying puppet one day.

Doviello are in pretty bad shape. Unfortunateely for them we are near by; otherwise as the barbs start really swarming they might have a chance to grow and make gains.

[Brian Shanahan]

EDIT: You know what, it just came to me. Hippis probably got the Great Bard event early and settled it. This would also explain why her cap stalled at 2 pop for so long even while building warriors; the 5 unhappy was crippling her growth.

I like seeing that event happen to AIs early, the unhappy really kills them, and they don't know how to strategically use the bard either.

Again, this looks like another nice turnset, good expansion and nice growth. I wouldn't be too worried about the bard deaths, dice rolls are very tricky in this game.

The test (and fun) of this game will definitely be after the two switches, can we dig ourselves out of the AI created holes.

[haphazard1]

Do we want to go back to Lord Parkin next, or move on to me and fit Lord Parkin in later in the rotation? I am happy with either, so I guess it depends on what would better fit Lord Parkin's schedule.

We can continue our expansion push with another settler, but where should we send it? East and a bit north of the Remnants, maybe?