[SPOILERS] Dark Age of Capria

[Bobchillingworth]

Not being able to communicate with your own ally is madness



I mean, I could see if people were objecting to you bringing in a human player on the grounds that a Gate which allows for two humans on a team is enormously more useful than one which only spawns an AI, and maybe people didn't want the game to allow for such an incredibly powerful wonder. But forcing you to just have some sort of mime ally is honestly bizarre

[Merovech]

Not being able to communicate with your own ally is madness



I mean, I could see if people were objecting to you bringing in a human player on the grounds that a Gate which allows for two humans on a team is enormously more useful than one which only spawns an AI, and maybe people didn't want the game to allow for such an incredibly powerful wonder. But forcing you to just have some sort of mime ally is honestly bizarre

Agreed, I didn't want to speak up in the tech thread, of course, but that's ridiculous.

[xenin]

It should be good for some amusing failures to co-ordinate anyway

[xenin]

Pictureless update, because I played the actual turn while traveling:

In episode one of mercurian , mafro is polluting his lovely pristine GPP pool. At the current rate the next GP comes in 5 turns, but there's only ~20% of engineer, and all other results are almost entirely worthless.

Instead of converting to esus and building gibbon for, say, twincast earth elemental illusionist summons (which would be rather handy as unbreakable stack defenders) he's building a siege workshop and requesting my horse, so I guess he's planning on chariots. I don't think that's a great idea, because we're going to be fighting horselord warcried horse archers on their home territory. There's no way to avoid taking the first hit, whatever the mobility of your troops, so you have to be able to absorb it and keep going, which chariots obviously aren't great at. With the raider trait they are decently mobile, but I think opportunities to use them to attack out will be limited, and cheaper horsemen serve the fast distracting pillager role better.

I had way more overflow built up than I realised; enough to finish Corruption of Spirit last turn at 0% and still finish Divination this turn without turning science back on. Unfortunately the savant came in a crap place and now has to walk all the way to my heroic epic city, so the ritualists are going to come really late. The demagogs march into nabaxo at the first sign of him losing cities to haphazard, or within the next 3 turns for sure, as he's at half haphazard's power and I'm amazed he's still holding. I'd go next turn if I was sure his troops were committed in the west; his garrisons on my side would have been considered weak 100 turns ago, but I'd prefer the Hippus to do the grunt work of taking out his army if possible.

Techwise I'm going to save gold for a few turns. I can finish mathematics-engineering in about 5 turns of 100% science, or I could pick up sorcery if I get a 10xp adept. Long term I'm not really sure what to do with my GNP. My default military civics give no way to cash rush, but I guess I could upgrade some warriors to champions or something. Doesn't seem too efficient.

[xenin]

Opened the turn to get a request for Vasudheim from mafro:



I'm not sure if I'm missing the masterplan here, but I don't see how this is a good idea. Here are his civics:



There would be a bit of a maintenance saving because the city is ~3rd ring for me and right next to his capital, but for tile improvements it has something like 10 farms, 1 mine and 1 plantation, and all those farms are worthless when he's not running aristocracy/conquest. The city also doesn't really have the right infrastructure, as it'll be unhappy and unhealthy with the limited mercurian resources, and only has a training yard for military. So I've refused for now; if there's some incredible advantage that I'm not seeing hopefully he'll ask again next turn or something.

Got a merchant for Nox Noctis, as expected. Should be built in 1-2 turns depending on the exact travel time. I'll then request the mana from mafro to get blur up on my troops.

One-turned mathematics last turn:



Engineering will follow in ~2 turns depending on how much capture gold I get from nabaxo. ToD -> mithril working is coming, but I can't start building it until my adepts finish building the nodes. Would have been able to save myself something like 5 turns on it if I'd grabbed divination earlier, but I'd have been kicking myself if I missed esus by one turn. It's taking a bit of gamble that I actually have mithril, but I've got about 2.5 players worth of the map under my control, and I kept a spare settler back before the crusade swap for just this sort of thing.

In foreign news, I saw nabaxo's points had dropped last turn, so declared and moved in. Confirmation of the city loss this turn:



You can see he's also swapped back to ashen veil, which probably means he plans to abandon this sinking ship and swap to Hyborem. I'm not sure how long it'll take him to research infernal pact, but it's not that much at this stage of the game, so I think he'll make it unless haphazard comes out of the fog to raise his capital.

I haven't got a great screenshot of the malakim front, but here's the west with my troops just about visible on the right:



You can see nabaxo's main stack retreating from the west. I guess he's planning to hold out in his capital. My two-movers are heading for the AV holy city while bypassing the front line; the one-movers will take out the first city next turn. Garrisons are completely negligible; I don't think I'll lose a unit unless he throws that main stack at me, which would leave all his cities exposed, and mean he can't get the manes from them once he's hyborem.

Across the other side of the world, yell0w popped the luchiurp worldspell, with slightly alarming effects on his production:



Serious risk of a tower win from over there. He doesn't yet have sorcery, but he's got a couple of the basic mana techs, and with that many golden hammers he'll have a stream of great engineers, and he's got 4 mana nodes right next to his start. Power ratings over that side are hilarious, I'd be shocked if tholal/yell0w are running anything more than 1 bronze warrior per city at the minute, but neither of them are showing any inclination to take over the other. I'm hoping if hyborem does come he shows up over there to keep them honest.

[xenin]

Since I had nothing better to do, I logged back into the turn to bring you... mercurian episode 2!

Mafro's running 100% science while in God King and without even an event fund and still polluting the GP pool with random crap. You can see something I didn't know though: my GP has incremented his counter, so the GP will take a little longer to come out. That means that his will increment mine, so I'm not sure I can even get to a 2 man GA without undercouncil sage. Will be pretty annoying if I lose that because the mercurians spawned a prophet.



Here's the second city:



His first build was the plantation (while not happy capped), which he's not actually working. He's now building a cottage on turn 136.

[xenin]

Here's a better shot of the malakim front:



Nabaxo made peace with haphazard, which means we should be able to clean up the malakim empire without interference, but gives haphazard some time to prepare. Hyborem rush almost certain at this point, he's still stacking everything in the capital. I've started putting a few demagogs in border towns in the south in case he spawns down there.

Once a few tigerpults go in, my 0 exp demagogs get pretty good odds:



I actually lost that one at 86%, but the others were all successful.

Can anyone explain what's happening here? The city says it's starving but apparently also puts 1 food surplus into building troops...



My savant finally made it to the heroic epic city, so I revolted to AV, with the expected fairly awful effects on my civ-wide happiness:



Pretty painful, but collateral is too important. Back to proper religion in 5 turns.

[Merovech]

I don't know why you are getting +1f into the demagog, but that city is definately starving; you're only bringing in 29f and you need 32f to support 16 people.

[DaveV]

Can anyone explain what's happening here? The city says it's starving but apparently also puts 1 food surplus into building troops...

My guess: the code that's calculating the surplus for hammer conversion is not taking the two angry citizens into account. That would change the food situation from -3 to +1.

[xenin]

My guess: the code that's calculating the surplus for hammer conversion is not taking the two angry citizens into account. That would change the food situation from -3 to +1.

I think this must be it.

Realised another mistake I've made: one of the mana nodes I'm converting for ToD is on a desert, and I forgot the work rate penalty also applies to adepts, so that's an even more delayed tower. Overall I've been pretty happy with my play this game, but there have been two big mistakes: going conquest too early and having to swap back out for another round of settlers, and not researching divination early enough so that now I have to wait for nodes when I could be building.

Fun side note: assuming I conquer the rest of the malakim empire, I could finish a tower victory without ever dispelling a node. I've got 4 open nodes in my territory, and the malakim have two set to body + enchantment and one open one. Add that to a bunch of shrines and unique features and you get...

Divination:
law (bannor palace)
sun (first spare)
spirit (bannor palace)
mind (second spare)

Alteration:
body (malakim node)
enchantment (malakim node)
nature (FoL shrine)
life (mercurian palace)

Elementalism:
fire (pyre of the seraphic)
water (third spare)
earth (bannor palace/mercurian palace)
air (fourth spare)

Necromancy:
death (broken sepulcher)
chaos (last spare)
shadow (esus shrine)
entropy (AV shrine)

I think in the early versions of FFH this was the only way to get a tower win, and it was regarded as too hard, resulting in dispelling being added and the version we see today (where it's really way too easy). Not sure I've actually ever had a game where I could do this that didn't involve conquering the entire world.