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

[Sciz]

Am also thinking about a naming scheme for cities and disciple units. The regular units will have redshirt # names like previously, but we should be able to mix it up for the disciple units, maybe some religious theme if possible. Popes, perhaps? The cities could be different holy cities throughout the world; Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina, Rome, Constantinople/Istanbul, Varanasi, Avignon, Nicaea, perhaps Bethlehem and Nasareth, etc

[Sciz]

Just played through a Malakim game, very fun! They are really strong imo. Don't really see the point of lightbringers though, I mean yeah they can promote to a lot of stuff, but for example if you want to promote one to a priest of some sort, you still need to be currently in that religion to promote it, and a temple of that religion in the city. Might as well build a regular priest then, since you're gonna have to convert anyways, and building the priest the regular way still gives it the same upgrades. I guess upgrading to stuff that aren't on the disciple line like mages, rangers and whatnot could be useful though, didn't do any of that though.

I did have a whole mix of different priests and they helped me a lot in the mid game. First went RoK and got some stonewardens, switched over to Empy and got some Vicars, then to Order for some Confessors and then FoL for a few priests of leaves, mainly to create tigers for the happiness I switched to Ashen Veil and fired off my world spell. Only had one city with Ashen Veil so I didn't get any exp on them, but exp doesn't matter much on Ritualists, I only abused their ring of fire which is terrific. Had like 10-12 cities at the point I used it, so that lasted me for the entire game pretty much, never had to go back to AV again to create more. I guess it did help that I founded all religions except FoL though Had the RoK, Empy, OO, CoE and Order shrines as well, which was great for mana and money. Won't be able to do that in this game though obviously. And apparently you can build Shadows without having CoE as your state religion, which I did not know. I chose Empy as my main religion after getting the various priests, because Chalid is a pimp.

Anywaysl the RoK bulb plan that Thoth discussed sounds great and I'll definitely follow up on that. Getting it early will be a big help. I'll prolly skip on OO. I'd really like it for the water mana, but aside from that I see no use for it, and don't want to waste beakers on it early on, since the Lanun will probably gun for it anyways. Maybe I can arrange a trade of mana for 10 turns or something when I get adepts up. Only need like one or maybe two adepts with water mana to spring the entire desert

[Selrahc]

I guess upgrading to stuff that aren't on the disciple line like mages, rangers and whatnot could be useful though,

The Malakim get some lovely boosts for disciple units, a pagan temple which adds xp, as well as potency and mobility. And lightbringers themselves get a free sentry promotion. Lightbringers let you convert those bonuses into units that aren't disciples. Which gives you lots of flexibility.

It's a unit that replaces a scout, but that remains useful all game and that you could build an entire strategy around. Decent enough for a UU.

[Sciz]

Yeah I know of that, it's just that the priest units all get the same promotions as the lightbringer anyways (except sentry I guess, but you don't really need 20 sentry promotions in one stack), and regular priests also get the exp boost from temples.

That said I did use them quite a lot anyways, mostly because they are cheaper than priests, so I could create them faster.

[Square Leg]

Hey Sciz,

Thanks for taking over! Sorry I haven't been back to lurk over the weekend - did the blitz session go ahead? The lightbringer is good at doing exactly what Selrahc said: converting priest xp into other xp. You can quickly get up to 10xp on new disciple units come the mid game which is great, but the lightbringer allows you to convert that into 10xp on Recon units by going to Disciple of Leaves - Ranger. Or to Arcane units by Savant - Mage.

So what happened to those Fawns that were spawned? Did they scarper after someone else or are we stockpiling warriors?

[Sciz]

Yeah we got like 5 turns or so yesterday. The fawns haven't appeared yet so i'm hoping they took the wrong turn somewhere

I'm in the process of creating another warrior though, and the warrior that just popped the hut is gonna move back too, just in case. I kinda want to start scouting with that lightbringer too, with its mobility and sentry, but that will have to wait until I can place another unit on the barrow.

[Square Leg]

5 turns is pretty good actually!

Have you managed to find any stand out second city sites? I placed those "c" sign's after casting a quick glance over the surroundings although in 5t you have probably revealled a bit more of the map.

The FP area to the south lacks a lot of production... That would probably best be settled once we have agristocracy for those 5f4c FP farms! (5c with Fin)

Otherwise there is the site to the east of the capital that has reasonable potential - I invisaged it using the Capital's Wheat since there are FP's for the Capital to use. It picks up gold which will increase happy cap.

Something else I meant to mark with a sign is that the sheep tile at the capital should probably get a mine in the fullness of time. (unless we desperately need the health)

[Sciz]

I posted a few screenshots above, there seems to be room for a city or two to the north of the capital with decent production and a bunch of rivers.

Other than that, yeah I've noticed the different city sites mentioned. To the east is probably our second city site. I just dislike the vast amounts of desert to the southeast and southwest, will give our civ really bad continuity land-wise, cities will have to be spread out to avoid all that stuff until we can spring the desert to plains.

[Square Leg]

Hey Sciz,

Anything juicy to report?

[Sciz]

Not this turn, absolutely nothing whatsoever happened. Next turn some screenshots though