Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Quiet turns, quiet reports, eh?

Before I forget, I should know tonight, but I will likely need someone to pick up turnplaying for Monday through Thursday unless I can get FFH up on the wife's laptop. It looks likely I'll get Civ on there, but I have zero confidence in that relic's ability to run a mod. If so, I fully trust any of you to play, you can work out amongst yourselves whom. I will have net access, so I'll be able to read the reports and comment. I think everyone has a fairly solid idea of what our medium-term plan is.

WotE still hasn't fallen, so looking promising at the moment. None of the competitors has settled anything new, nor built any wonders nor birthed any GPs.

The most interesting part of the turn was this:



That doesn't normally carry cargo, does it?

Rawkking's Drown will make contact with Sheaim next turn if it hasn't already. Nicolae retreated his PZ stack to deal with the kill team. Did he not know that was what was going to happen when he they hit 4 warriors at Domir? Perhaps Selrahc isn't advising him too closely. Anyway, he has a war and a PZ in the city, so I'd expect he'll handle the kill team fine.

In the north, Kahbalg's kill team is headed out. We shall see whether Cypress Hill or Paradise City makes the tastier target. With the ubiquitous Bronze Warrior now on the field, I'm unconcerned about a flotilla of STR 3 warriors anywhere, so wherever they land, its free XP. Kyan has his Griffon annoyingly perched, so I'm covering our worker stack at Cypress Hill with Terra Ryzing. If he wants to donate a Griffon to the cause, I'm happy to have the xp.



In micro news, 4T to the gold mine. Hash Pipe grows next turn onto a forest hill cottage, Almond Joy and Doritos are down in the south prepping some tiles in anticipation of the new settler, who arrives in 2T. Paradise City completed its Temple, starts on a disciple for Cypress Hill, and is now working a priest specialist. Cypress Hill started a worker, due in 4T. Not bad for only having 2 improved tiles to work. Downside - it only has 2 improved tiles to work.

[Gaspar]

Sent the message to Rawkking, btw.

[NobleHelium]

I think most if not all ships in FFH have some cargo space. Not sure why they decided to do that. It's definitely a barbarian ship from a lair pop (likely a shipwreck by a griffon *cough*), since it's got Heroic Strength and that isn't obtainable by a human without Mutated (or Hero obviously).

[Mardoc]

Before I forget, I should know tonight, but I will likely need someone to pick up turnplaying for Monday through Thursday unless I can get FFH up on the wife's laptop.

Can do. I don't have a lot of confidence in my micro ability, but I can generally keep improving tiles + researching WotE -> Festivals -> Philo -> Priesthood and not fighting yet. Have we decided which site is next, for that settler almost done? The Domir-area linker, or northwest, or off to the east?

Maybe hopefully you get FFH working properly and it's irrelevant, though. Let us know the status once it's closer.

Also - it would be nice if that pirate had made it a turn or two earlier, to snack on a Drown I'm glad to hear he's a barb, though, not a Clown.

Edit: Pirates do have cargo space, but I don't think I've seen barbs load them up.

[Gaspar]

I think most if not all ships in FFH have some cargo space. Not sure why they decided to do that. It's definitely a barbarian ship from a lair pop (likely a shipwreck by a griffon *cough*), since it's got Heroic Strength and that isn't obtainable by a human without Mutated (or Hero obviously).

Yeah, that was what I figured.

Can do. I don't have a lot of confidence in my micro ability, but I can generally keep improving tiles + researching WotE -> Festivals -> Philo -> Priesthood and not fighting yet. Have we decided which site is next, for that settler almost done? The Domir-area linker, or northwest, or off to the east?

Maybe hopefully you get FFH working properly and it's irrelevant, though. Let us know the status once it's closer.

Also - it would be nice if that pirate had made it a turn or two earlier, to snack on a Drown I'm glad to hear he's a barb, though, not a Clown.

Edit: Pirates do have cargo space, but I don't think I've seen barbs load them up.

I think I might be inclined to go Philo -> Priesthood -> Festivals, since as MBTM has pointed out, we don't really have spare hammers at the moment. Not sure if that had been fully decided yet. Would like to get Priests in the field as well, so we can take down that Barb city, as fun as farming XP off it is.

As far as cities, I'm already improving tiles for the linking site, so that's definitely the current plan. Regardless, if it turns out I have no hope of playing I'll post everything I'm assuming currently in detail. That will let us debate a bit as well.

[Mardoc]

As far as cities, I'm already improving tiles for the linking site, so that's definitely the current plan. Regardless, if it turns out I have no hope of playing I'll post everything I'm assuming currently in detail. That will let us debate a bit as well.

...which might be a reason to post it regardless, if you're not swamped with trip preparations.

I'm assuming that somehow, by hook or crook, we still pull out a win .

Also I did think the linking site would be next, and the main question on festivals is what else we plan to be doing in that time; I could see the argument for waiting until we've got some Tigers to play with, especially with RG in contact with Nicolae shortly.

I suppose I can definitely see the argument that our goals at the moment are building enough more settlers/warriors/workers to grab the rest of our sites >> spreading all our religions and building temples > building other infrastructure, which would say that Markets/Carnivals, as 'other infrastructure', can wait.

I'm also apparently assuming that between now and Friday we get enough turns around for the next tech decision to be necessary

[Azoth]

Some early morning thoughts:

1. I agree with Linking City as City #5. Any word back from Nicolae? I'd hate for him to throw a fit and direct any leftover Zombies from Domir straight at our new city.

2. Again, I'm not a fan of building disciples this soon. That disciple in Paradise City is worth an Elder Council or a Market, right there. (And I'd prefer to leave Cypress Hill without religion so that it becomes the Runes Holy City, as opposed to the Linking City.) Paradise City should switch to an Elder Council; an extra scientist slot will bring its next Great Person that much closer.

3. I'd argue for Festivals first. Once we reach Priesthood, we will have no time to build Markets and Carnivals. Every major city will be training a Priest of Leaves. Thus, the best time to build Markets and Carnivals is on the way to Priesthood. Markets and Carnivals are definitely worth the investment; and the earlier we build them, the better. Ideally, most of our cities will have Carnivals by the time we have Priests, so we'll be able to settle Tigers immediately.

4. That pirate ship, The Saowus, could belong to Kyan. Note that it has the Hidden Nationality promotion, so it will always appear as barbarian. For that matter, it could belong to Rawwking. It could also be an unlucky lair pop or simply a feature that our map maker left behind. Note that it has only a single cargo slot, so it can't be all that dangerous. It's just another reason for us to put Cultists on that lake.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Might be best if Mardoc does aim to grab the save, since his timezone makes it much easier. If it’s still sitting there in the morning, then I’ll see if I can play it before work to keep things moving along.

I’m very worried that the Elohim haven’t picked up any points for a while. We could be in a religion race.

In terms of settling, I’m also happy for the linking site next. I’m very surprised Nicolae hasn’t moved to take Domir straight away, which just means we can get more culture on the scene before he has a chance.

On tech path, I’m inclined to see how the diplo goes. If we’re still getting the cold shoulder from RG, and have any remaining worries about Nicolae, then I think Priests on the scene soon makes sense. Workers, settlers, temples and garrison seem fine as a plan in advance of that.

For Paradise City, I think in general terms Azoth is right that an Elder Council would be a better move than a Disciple. However, and particularly if it has hammers into it, I think the specific problems of either the really low happy cap at Cypress Hill or keeping tiles from Domir mean that spreading religion is the right choice on this occasion (not sure which spread would be best, actually?).

We do only have ten turns of NAP remaining. I’m assuming we March the Trees in the face of any Sheaim aggression, but keep building otherwise. Domir and San Francisco should be taken by our Treants. Despite the danger of the zombies, we should be able to mop up with seven cities versus two. We know Nic has a NAP with Kyan, so in theory the Clowns should be held back from dogpiling.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Had a look at yesterday's save.

I am worried about the Elohim getting RoK before us. Hopefully, it won't have fallen when we next see the save.

I know it will murder our event cash, but I'd be really grateful if whoever plays the next turn could try to get WotE in one turn. I have a feeling we'll be just short, running 100% science, max commerce tiles and sages. I'd be gutted if we missed out by a turn without confirming we couldn't quite get there in time.

[Gaspar]

It appears as though barring a miracle I won't be able to play any turns before Friday. Oddly enough, I was able to get Civ4 and FFH installed on the laptop, but amazingly enough I can't seem to get a web browser to work. Shows you how often we use that thing. I'll do my damnedest to get a detailed "this is what I'm thinking" post up before I go, but the turns are moving slow enough and the conversation free enough that I think we're relatively close to the same page here. I will be able to pop in and comment from the iPad, so you're not totally shot of me for the week.

Re: WotE, I took a look last turn to see if we could shave a turn off and I didn't see a way to make it work but I must confess that I didn't try *that* hard. If Elohim beat us, they beat us - not much we can do about it now. They're researching slow enough that it could be lots of different things, I suppose.