Like a hot wind Varn Gosam of the Malakim [SPOILERS]

[Thoth]

Well, insomnia hit me again so I spent a bit of time sandboxing.....

With a bit of careful micro I can land RoK in my capital ~t41 with 4 warriors, a worker, and a settler ready to go. (5 warriors and a Lightbringer if my some freak of the RNG they manage to survive that long. I'm not holding my breath on that one)

Of course this may very well go out the window depending on the local surroundings, hut pops, barb invasions, proximity of neighbours ect. But it's looking good so far.

Though getting Rok that early without a tech pop means delaying Calender until a bit later. Given the lack of Calendar resources at my start, I can live with that.

[Thoth]

Turn 2 (1 according to Civ, programmers need to get out into the real world more often) has been played.....huts have been poped.

Updates to come in a bit.

[Square Leg]

Hey Thoth,

Just checking in. I don't have a whole lot to say yet other than my timezone is GMT and I'm available on here most of the day during the week.

[Thoth]

Thanks for checking in.

I was beginning to feel like I was talking to myself.

(I'll get an update for turn 2 up when I'm a little more sober.....the rum bottle was looking at me funny so I had to drink some)

[Square Leg]

I haven't played as the Malakim before but Varn Gosam has been a pain in the arse in a lot of single player games of mine! He always gets off to a lightning start for some reason...

It is clear that getting access to a couple of religions is going to be useful because as you said - flexibility is one of our cards. So - which religions would it be nice to have?

RoK - yep - this could be a good early game religion to found and spread. Stonewardens are useful if not the most powerful priest.

FoL - not really a religion that works well with the desert people! Priest of leaves are pretty meh for us as bloom has no use really.

OO - depends on the map but looking at our start not really a priority. The water mana from the shrine would be nice though. The Cultist with Tsunami is a bit meh for us also.

AV - Maybe not a longterm religion but the Ritualist is awesome. Ring of Flames can be very powerful and we love the heat! A quick swap to AV to gain a job lot Ritualists from our world spell would be nice.

CoE - Hmm - We would get Nightwatch instead of priest if we cast our worldspell whilst in CoE - not really the best considering. Nox Noctis obviously is cool.

Emp - Now we are talking. The natural choice for the Malakim. More sun mana from Dies Diei plus more xp on priests, reveals HN units also. Chalid Atrakein - nuff said. The Vicar has Revelation as a spell. How many illusions are we going to face?

Order - Not a bad choice either on the face of it. Bless is a good spell just for the +1 Holy strength and with the Sheaim in the game it may be necessary at some point.

Enough for now...

[Thoth]

Turn summary: Bagged the desert hut (34g), moved Lightbringer onto Barrow. Pressed enter. Capital's borders popped.



There's gold in them there hills. :D

Based on what I can see so far, I'm thinking the first settler heads to the 1. It can steal the wheat from Golden Lean To, and function as a solid early game production city (Wheat, cows, mined gold, mined GH, mined PH = 14 hpt @ size 5).

I'll want a bit more scouting info to the north, but I can see lots of green tiles so there should be a decent site up there for settler 2.

Down south, there's a nice commerce/food city site on the 3. It will suck for production until I can get some lumbermills up on the forests (fog gazing suggests that there are 2 forests in the second ring to the south.

South-east, that desert is looking fairly large. Once I can spring it (and possibly bloom some of it for some hammers) and chain irrigation is available, a decent city or two can be built there.

Something I've just noticed: The tile 2 S of GLT (the original start tile) is a riverside Desert without floodplain. I suspect the hand of our mapmaker was at work here.


Demographics:



(C&D to follow...need to check a few things...)

WarriorKnight has settled and picked up 11 points. Possibly a tech, I'm not sure if having cultural control of Unique Features gives points or not that's one of the things I need to check on.

[Selrahc]

CoE - Hmm - We would get Nightwatch instead of priest if we cast our worldspell whilst in CoE - not really the best considering. Nox Noctis obviously is cool.

Nope. Assassins. Which is cool, because assassins are otherwise banned for the Malakim.

[Thoth]

I haven't played as the Malakim before but Varn Gosam has been a pain in the arse in a lot of single player games of mine! He always gets off to a lightning start for some reason...

Being able to work 3f 2c Floodplains from turn 1 does nice things to the tech and growth rate.

It is clear that getting access to a couple of religions is going to be useful because as you said - flexibility is one of our cards. So - which religions would it be nice to have?

RoK - yep - this could be a good early game religion to found and spread. Stonewardens are useful if not the most powerful priest.

Agreed. I'd like it in the capital to take advantage of the God King cash boost to the holy city but that does mean delaying the 2nd city until turn 41-42. I've sandboxed it, and building 2 warriors while teching myst and growing to size 4 (takes until turn 13) followed by worker (4 turns with hammer overflow)/desert shrine (set priest at size 5) and swap to Pacifism. That will produce a Great Prophet circa turn 40-41. Tech: after Myst get Agriculture, Crafting and Mining. Mining should finish circa turn 39-40 and allow the Prophet to bulb RoK.

Once the DS finishes, GLT builds 2 warriors and a settler, finishing about turn 40-41.

Alternatively, I could tech Exploration and Fishing and then use the prophet to bulb OO. I'm not keen on the idea. Exploration is a needed early tech for roads but Fishing doesn't do much for landlocked cities.

A few early SWs would be great. +10% strength on all our units is quite nice and the SWs will level fast with Spiritual. +2 gpt from the cheap temples is also very nice.

FoL - not really a religion that works well with the desert people! Priest of leaves are pretty meh for us as bloom has no use really.

FoL certainly isn't a priority, but a PoL or two would be handy. There's a lot of desert to the south-east. Complete junk at the moment but with Spring + chain irrigation for food and a few bloomed plains tiles (for hammers), a decent city can be set up. That's a ways off yet, but something to consider for later.
+1 health from the temples would be handy as would the free tiger cage in every city.

OO - depends on the map but looking at our start not really a priority. The water mana from the shrine would be nice though. The Cultist with Tsunami is a bit meh for us also.

Agreed. I'd really like an early source of water mana to start reclaiming some desert but there are a bunch of higher priority items (mining to locate bronze, AH to improve the cows and reveal horses, possibly HBR/Stirrups depending on the neighbours). It's also a natural fit for the Lanun so I expect OO to get founded by them unless I really warp the early tech path.

Cultists might be handy depending on the map. Based on the pre-game discussion about the map, I'm expecting navy to play a role in this game. If that is the case then having a few cultists could prove useful.

The temples would also provide a cheap source of culture.

AV - Maybe not a longterm religion but the Ritualist is awesome. Ring of Flames can be very powerful and we love the heat! A quick swap to AV to gain a job lot Ritualists from our world spell would be nice.

A pile of Ritualists would indeed be very nice. The only issue here is that swapping to AV will change alignment to evil. If Hyborem gets summoned that opens us up to Hell Terrain spread even at low AC. With the Sheam in the game, I expect the AC will be climbing quite rapidly especially if they grab KoTE early.

CoE - Hmm - We would get Nightwatch instead of priest if we cast our worldspell whilst in CoE - not really the best considering. Nox Noctis obviously is cool.

Might be nice, but I doubt we'll have the beakers to spare.

Emp - Now we are talking. The natural choice for the Malakim. More sun mana from Dies Diei plus more xp on priests, reveals HN units also. Chalid Atrakein - nuff said. The Vicar has Revelation as a spell. How many illusions are we going to face?

This will likely be the religion to settle in for the late game (Chalid ).
Vicars can be very handy if one of the neighbours is playing with CoE.
+10% research from the temples is nice as well.

Order - Not a bad choice either on the face of it. Bless is a good spell just for the +1 Holy strength and with the Sheaim in the game it may be necessary at some point.

Definitely want to pick up Order at some point, +1 Holy strength is nothing to be sneered at, and the +10% unit production from the temples will come in handy I'm sure. Having Order available to switch to would also allow an alignment shift back to Good if we swap to AV.

Enough for now...

[Thoth]

Nope. Assassins. Which is cool, because assassins are otherwise banned for the Malakim.

Malakim can build Assassins. IIRC it's the Elohim who can't.

[Selrahc]

Malakim can build Assassins. IIRC it's the Elohim who can't.

*Checks in game*
Oh. I wonder when they changed that. They used to be banned for Malakim, certainly(says it in the manual, and it was definitely the case when I started playing).

Hell, if they changed that they might have made it so you get Nightwatches from using the worldspell as well, so just ignore my last comment.