World breakers , zombies and horsemen

[Serdoa]

Over 70%. If he had lost, I simply would have retreated my Wolf-Rider. There was nothing GtAngel could do now or in the next 20 turns (maybe even more) to hurt me.

[Serdoa]

Btw: Now that I know where the capitals of Clowns and Sidar are, here an overview:



Ouch.

[Serdoa]

5 warriors in GtAngels capital. I have my wolf rider and an archer... that could take several more turns and she certainly can reproduce warriors there, maybe quicker than I can kill them. Lets hope that's not the case because by now I really am getting a little pissed with all the forgotten and wrongly send saves. I know that can happen, has happened to me as well, but for gods sake her turn should take 2 minutes to play, is it really asked too much to do that right away and not take every third turn 24+ hours for it?

[Serdoa]

Well, as everyone should be aware, this is a 3 player game now. So, lets look at how my civ is doing. Overview-shot from T68:




7 cities, 10 workers or something like that for those. 2 of them settled this turn, the one in the south at the gems and the one at the ivory. The one for the gems was badly planned as it has neither a road nor do I have BW to chop the jungle. But I am working instead the gold with it and produce culture for now, I need a border pop anyhow. Road will take 2 more turns unfortunately, but the trade-routes are bringing in 1 commerce so it is not like the biggest loss ever. Plan is to get the border pop and grow it to 2 while getting BW (that will take 4 more turns) and than improve both gems while growing to 3 to work those. I guess in ~8 turns everything might be up and running here.

The ivory-city is a little bit better, working the pigs (farmed...) right now. It will get the ivory improved in time for its growth, than another farm, a border pop, the FP and some hills down the road.

The flames are still annoying, making it hard to expand up there, despite it being the part of the land that actually would be free for grabs. But I need at least one, maybe even two rather bad cities, just to get to the good part of the land. I'm not sure that really is an option tbh. Down south though is as can be seen already Whosit. 3 cities right now, but we have a NAP till T90 or 100 I think. I'm not going to attack him and break that, even though his soldier count is really low. Maybe down the line sometimes, but I am not sure. I don't think I have a reliable method to kill the Hippus and without that, there is not much sense in killing the Clowns either, it won't win me the game.

Therefore plan right now is to expand further east where I cleaned the place of other civilizations I would like to be at around 15 cities by T100 if somehow affordable. That should gain me a big enough edge that the others might simply concede. If not, it is either ToM-time, though in EitB it seems you need more techs that are really expensive (we talk 7000+ beakers here...), or I will see if I can kill everyone else. I mean, what else can I do? Culture is not really an option imo (that takes as long as ToM from a tech-standpoint but can't be as easily achieved with SoK than ToM is), Altar is definitely no option - apart from being again as expensive as ToM-techs, it needs several GPs and would be obvious like 100 turns before it actually happens. Leaves ToM and Conquest. And Conquest is the only thing doable without huge tech-investments - something I can only lose if I compete with the others.

And while we are competing: Demos T68




Obviously, GNP is ... low That's without tech-selected but even with it is low. I have 50 gold costs at the moment. Though I am not crashing, I hope. I will change next turn to Military State and Aristocracy. The former should bring around 6 gold while the latter should get me 23. Together with a tech selected, that should change that GNP to around 60 I'd guess? I mean that's still not all that great, but quite honestly, I am not sure what else I can do. Apart from building cottages everywhere. Though I am not sure if anything needs to be done. Their GNP seems to be very high in comparison, but right now I can still go 100% research and that brings in 62 beakers per turn without bonus. I don't think they are that much better. Pretty much just the 10% that I lose due to Barbarian-trait is my guess. And of course not as many costs, because of less cities and smaller military.

Anyhow, plan is BW (for the gems) -> Myst -> Philo -> RoK and get those temples into play. 3 gold from market + 2 gold from temple + 1 TR + 1 city center + 2 from farm = 9 commerce per newly settled city. That should offset the costs that I have with it for the most part I think.

[Serdoa]

Well, GNP did change after the switches, higher than I thought actually:

[Qgqqqqq]

What techs does ToM require in EitB that it doesn't need in vanilla?
I apologise for the flames, I didn't realise how those worked unfortunately...

[Serdoa]

I think I remembered wrongly. I thought you didn't need Strenght of Will, but after thinking about ToM-victory for this game when having the open save in front of me I think what I did was using the ToD free tech for it and bulbed Arcane Lore with 2 or 3 Great Sages in FFH12.

Anyhow, after some checking, I think I could do a Tower-victory, even quicker than in FFH12. I should have WotE by ~T80. KotE till T84, each of the 4 magic-techs ~5 turns. That's T104. Sorcery + Writing another 15, that's T119. So 20 turns for ~3400 beakers to get Arcane Lore if I remember correctly. One GS can be produced till than, so more like 2200-2400 beakers. With bonus around 1900. That's actually doable. Finish it T139, finish ToD T140 as last tower, take SoW, finish ToM on T141.

Probably possible to shave some turns off. I don't know for example if I can build TGLibrary. I suppose I can't because a pre-req states "Library in the building city" and I can't build those, but the game actually does not show me that pre-req when I look at the Civilopedia as CoE. If I can build that, I can get 2 GS in time I think, and the needed beakers at T119 for AL would be down to around 1000 with bonus. That's 10 turns, maybe less.

Suppose the question now is just, can I get the necessary mana in time? I do have a metamagic-node in my territory, so I will be able to teach a Mage the spell to undo nodes. But I need to get one first AND I need to find out if I can dispel the existing "nodes" or not (still haven't checked). I have the feeling those are pre-placed mana-types, not just nodes which are set to a mana already. If that's the case, I will have just one or two nodes to switch around in my territory which might not be enough.

And well, I have two neighbours of whom probably only one is willing to agree to a longer NAP. Which I am not sure he would keep tbh. So maybe I should reconsider the plan of just killing them?

For that plan, the positive is that I did pop Smelting this turn from a Graveyard (which nearly did put me above the threshold for barb-peace and might very well do if I get land-points or if Molach decides to starve one of his cities, just to annoy me ) so I am just 1 tech away from Iron-Ogres. I can get up to 6 XP on every starting unit I suppose (FotT, Apprenticeship, Conquest) so together with HBR I could make them 3 movers with 10 str. Or I suppose if I go the ToM-route I'd rather try to get Adepts with Haste and produce them with 2XP instead but have 25% while producing them. Anyhow, I can get around 14 per 6 turns just from 3 cities I calculated (one of them having HE of course), so I should be able to mass like 30-40 of them, supposedly till T110 around if I really set my goals in that direction. That should do the job against Whosit quite clearly. Leaves Molach who can outrun me with his Horses certainly.

But that leads me to the "annoying" flames. Did I get that right that only orcs can move through the flames? Or put differently: Is it correct that Hippus-Horses won't be able to move through them? Because looking at the map I can setup 2 cities to the west which will together with the flames prevent anyone from simply moving into my territory. I can do the same in the southwest and east. The only open flank would be the southeast. But that's only open as long as Whosit lives. If I take him out and grab the land for myself I probably can cut that off with a few cities as well. I assume that a total of 6-7 cities would really need to get defenders en masse to hold the rest of the empire, which would be around 20 cities. Which is doable, especially if eyes are kept from which direction he is moving in. Because that could probably reduce the necessary troops by half. Which probably wouldn't be that many, considering that they should defend with something of around 18 str I think. That's quite some horses you'd need to kill them I suppose. Mix in a few non-melee units + a stack of Horses in the back that can be sped up and together with combat workers he might have a hard time actually killing something. And if he does, it just is a worthless flame-city

Ok, so I still don't know which route I want to go. Probably the second one, but I fear that could be really time-consuming + I don't know all the things that break combat in FFH / EitB, and I probably will lose just because I didn't realize that something was possible.

[DaveV]

But that leads me to the "annoying" flames. Did I get that right that only orcs can move through the flames? Or put differently: Is it correct that Hippus-Horses won't be able to move through them?

That is correct. However, the level 1 Water spell (Spring) extinguishes flames in all tiles adjacent to the caster.

[Ellimist]

In FFH-XX I was unable to build the Great Library as Jonas.

On the other hand, the National Epic requires a library too but the Clan can build that just fine without one.

[Qgqqqqq]

You can dispel the mana, but you need to build the node to use it.