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

[Sciz]

So, turn 13 strode forth in all its splendor and gave us... mysticism!



The real prize here is of course our beautiful desert shrine +2 exp for disciple units is key in getting strong priests, and the priest specialist we can acquire after building this holy place of worship will give us a great prophet to use hopefully to bulb RoK.

A lot of new stuff to do then. First of all start on agriculture, a mere 5 turn tech! And at the same time our second warrior is completed, and it gets garrison duty. Production is started on a worker, 6 turns until it is completed, so it lines up pretty well with agriculture. Still no sight of any barbarians, so I move our northern scouting warrior a bit further away again, to see what he can find, but he finds just more ocean. Sigh. A shot of our northern lands!



Pretty decent land up there. Only one resource, but hills aplenty, which we need for production, and rivers for financial farms is very nice. Lots of cool grassland as well. I can easily see two cities fitting in up there, though no dotmap yet as it is late and i am tired. In a few turns when I have scouted a bit more land perhaps. Also a look at our southern lands:



Nothing new here, still the same view Thoth left us with, as I have not scouted more in this direction since Redshirt 1's unfortunate death. However there is potential for quite a few decent cities here. Only problem is the massive amounts of desert of course. We really do need some source of water mana to get all this land useful. We won't be able to found OO i'm sure, and making use of our one single mana node for water seems like a waste right now. Hopefully we find more mana nodes soon, or maybe we are neighbors with the Lanun and maybe can arrange a trade of water mana. We only need one adept promoted with water after all.

The C in the top right is still my first choice for a city, as the capital hardly needs that wheat with all the FP, so it can get growing quickly, and the hills and gold will be very useful to us. Cows doesn't hurt either. I thought that C to the southwest looked pretty shabby at first, but when I look at it again it's pretty good, dunno how I could have missed that it picks up wheat and a flood plain for good food and also gold when we get aristocracy.

A good amount of hills as well for production, and it will become even better when springed. Of course a big problem with all this desert is that our cities will grow pretty far apart, as you can see with the western C. But we will have to make do with what we have. The southern C will also become a good city, even though it lacks production it has great commerce potential to make up for it, and when we spring all that desert maybe we can bloom some forests for some decent production as well.

So that's my opinion then. Those three C's in the southern map and two cities in the northern parts can be our first six cities together with the capital. Not bad at all, when I saw all this desert I thought it'd be much harder to find good city locations.

[Square Leg]

Hey Sciz,

My thought's on the C's I placed are:

Eastern C: (Wheat, Cows, Gold) It will lack food in the longrun but has some good short term potential working the 3 resources and pumping wither warriors and the odd worker. Throw in another GL mine at size 4 and it will be ok for now.

Southern C: (Plain's incence and Mana) This site picks up 4 FP's and so it will be a nice commerce site, esspecially with that incence but like you said, No production at all. We will need to Bloom some of those tiles to the south eventually. Maybe it will be ok as a 4th or 5th city unless we have a neighbour down there looking to claim it.

Western C: (Wheat, desert incence)I quite like this site for 2 reason's: It has production! Ok the desert hills are a bit meh but at least we get an extra commerce! It also gains another wheat and desert incence which is a great tile for us. 7 or 8 commerce no less!

The north looks quite nice too! Just farm everything flat and mine the hills. Maybe a city 1s of the crabs and another one either 4 or 5W of that depending on what is in the fog.

Nice start - we probably want to get the production cities up first because we are going to be swimming in commerce early doors, especially if we found RoK. That will help us keep a high slider until we change to financial and build markets everywhere too! They will allow us to keep a high slider whilst expanding to 6 cities+ ready for: researching writing and throw down libraries to help our high slider and we are away! Economy 101! if only it were that simple! ha ha.

I hope we do have the Launen near us as I agree, that is the easiest way to water mana we have.

EDIT: Don't forget to swap to God King if you haven't already

EDIT 2: How sweet would the GPro event be now?!?!

[Sciz]

I actually did forget to swap to God King, whoops

Thanks for reminding me

Anyways I agree with your assessment on production. First city is the one to the east that you marked, then probably two up north because of their relative closeness and good mining potential, and then we start focusing on the south.

[Sciz]

Well I finally revolt to God King, since I haven't been able to previous turns because of the 10 turn wait between civic switches, I guess Thoth switched from religion to nationhood on turn 6. After the switch to God King the demographics make for some nice reading



feels good man

[Sciz]

Not much going on right now but next turn the worker and agriculture will finish. I've also been thinking that maybe we should try to avoid coastal cities because of the Lanun and OO = they can easily take coastal cities with superior navy and tsunamis and whatnot.

Also I noticed an unnatural thing in the map which perhaps shows that the mapmaker has intervened; the river system just south of the capital doesn't have anywhere it flows out. The river has two forks, which both flow south, but then when they meet, the river flows north, so basically the outflow part is in the middle of a fork. Can't really illustrate it with a non-moving picture though. Not that it matters at all, I just realized it when I played the save today.

[Sciz]

[SIZE="3"]Turn 18[/SIZE]



Agriculture finished, and we start on crafting, which will lead to Mining, and hopefully after that we'll be able to bulb RoK.



Our new worker goes to the wheat to improve it, which will hopefully give us +1 health, i'm not sure if that tile is actually connected to the river or not. Work in city starts on a city shrine, when it completes we will have a priest specialist to get a great prophet.

I'm also gonna replace that lightbringer on the barrow with the incoming warrior, so the lightbringer can scout instead. First of all the lightbringer is a better scouter with mobility and sentry, and second of all the warrior will be able to protect the capital much better if it stays around than the lightbringer would be able to do.

[Square Leg]

I don't think that the wheat is connected but you can tell by checking if the tile offer's any commerce.

The Lightbringer is actually relatively easy to keep alive if you are willing to move him 1 tile at time and use the 2nd movement to run away from nasties if you spot them in his extended vision. 2 movers can still be a little bit of a problem but we can always run away into the desert where most units suffer movement penalties.

[Sciz]

Not much happened this turn, just trucking along, waiting for stuff to happen. When I sent on the turn I saw this though:



An evil skeleton heading for my borders! Now I won't be able to replace my lightbringer with the warrior, since I'm gonna want both warriors back in the capital just in case.

[Square Leg]

An evil skeleton heading for my borders! Now I won't be able to replace my lightbringer with the warrior, since I'm gonna want both warriors back in the capital just in case.

I don't know what the exact odds will be but taking that skeleton on in attack might be an option. The skeleton should get -25% defensive bonus for being in the sand and we should get a +20% bonus to our attack for th nomad promotion.

I am crap with these multiplyer's, does that mean he will 3-(3*0.25) = 2.25 and we will be 3+(3*0.2) = 3.6 Is that right?!?

[Square Leg]

Just used an odds calculator..



So the %age bonuses come off the defender?

Gives us 89% odds and a chance of more xp.