[SPOILERS] ARRR Ye Scurvy Dogs! Hannah the Irin

[Mardoc]

Glad to hear my path makes sense to you, Dave. I'll head for Mining next turn when Crafting comes in.

Nothing to say this turn, except that it's been 12 turns since the Fawns slew my scout. If they'd beelined for Captain Crunch, I think they'd have been here by now, at least within sight. Therefore, I'm going to theorize/hope that they were closer to another target, a target that will hopefully take some real damage, then put the Fawns under. Ideally, this is whoever released them to the world, who I still believe to be the Malakim.

Finally, I've got a game mechanics question for the future, to whoever's out there. When I get Sailing, and hence trade along the coast - does a foreign trade partner also need Sailing for a connection to be made, or does it just require one of us? A secondary, related question - if they're not coastal, but are on a river that connects to a sea that I connect to, does that connect for trading purposes? Finally, do barbs block trade routes? There's no way I'll be able to kill a Sea Tortoise anytime soon, if it's in my trading route.

Since I'm Raiders, I suspect people are going to be leery of connecting many/any roads to my empire, yet I still need to be able to trade mana/resources and hopefully trade routes. So I want to see what exactly will be required for that trade to work.

[McClure]

If you have Sailing and a clear, coastal route you can receive trade routes from a foreign civilization (with open borders). Their having Sailing only affects your ability to give trade routes. Once you have Sailing you can trade resources even without open borders.

Cities connected to rivers that empty into the clear, coastal route are available for trade routes.

Barbs do disrupt trade routes, although I doubt the Barb AI is programmed to blockade. So the Barbs should keep moving and will often "un-block" the route on their own.

[T-hawk]

Barbs do disrupt trade routes

Was true in Civ 3 but not in Civ 4. A trade path is not disrupted by an enemy unit, unless it is blockading. A simple barb galley does not block trade.

If you have Sailing and a clear, coastal route you can receive trade routes from a foreign civilization (with open borders). Their having Sailing only affects your ability to give trade routes. Once you have Sailing you can trade resources even without open borders.

Resource trading works if either party can see a trade path, so if either party has Sailing and has defogged a path up to the other civ's water border (from your capital up to adjacency to a water tile within the other civ's border and connected to the other civ's capital.)

[Mardoc]

Thank you both for the clarification! Sailing's pretty high on my priority list anyway, but I doubt it would be for anyone else; it's good to know that I can trade with my fellow Illyrians, even if I can't kill a Tortoise parked on the coastline or some such.

Of course, I might still attempt to play dumb and get a road connection anyway; I think it's been well demonstrated how useful that can be when you're a Raider. And fortunately, the only other civ in this game who can be a Raider is the Malakim, who have to choose between that and Financial .

The last two turns have been surprisingly eventful, actually. First, I noticed that I still didn't have Exploration, so hooking up the wines wasn't going to be possible. A quick 3-turn detour there; Mining will be next. Then, I got the 'strange wasting disease' event, which cost me a population in Cap'n Crunch, right as I was about to start on a settler. After deliberating for a while, I decided to regrow first, then start the settler next turn. (I'm up to four warriors, so I ought to have plenty for an escort.) The food box was full - thanks to the coves, even running hammer-heavy gives me a food surplus, at least now when my next best hammer tiles are grassland forests.

And...my Chaos mana has paid off for me! My most recent warrior was mutated - to be Light and Strong. Which makes him Str 4, 2 move, - 20% Str, 10% withdrawal chance. Although I'm tempted to try to keep him around until Bronze or Orthus, I think the best use for him is going to be as a sturdier scout. I'll probably send him out exploring next turn, to finish exploring that peninsula for city 3 and then maybe, hopefully, go find a neighbor. I'll get more mutated units eventually, I'm sure.

Current plan for next turn - finish Exploration, start Mining. Cap'n Crunch regrows and starts a settler, and my mutated warrior starts finding out about the scary world out there. With apparently a great distance between me and my foes, I need to get in as strong a position as possible by the time we meet.

Next post, I'm also going to take the time to look up and describe the various spells I will have access to from my Lanunish water, air, and chaos mana, and my likely Mirror Sun mana. I can't use any of them yet, of course, but organizing my thoughts for future plans will be worthwhile in itself.

[Mardoc]

Mana, and spells:

As I mentioned, as the Lanun I have Air, Chaos, and Water mana as my palace sources; I intend to seize the Mirror of Heaven for a Sun mana source as well. I also have a raw mana node in the lands I ought to be able to claim, but I'd have to talk about everything in the game to come to a conclusion on what makes sense there. The only global effect from any of my mana is what's already noticed - Chaos mana gives a +2% chance per source to cause a unit to be mutated. I believe, but am not certain, that this only applies to new units, so I don't expect to see much unplanned mutation in my empire. Finally, with both Air and Water mana, I'm halfway to the prereqs for a Tower of the Elements.

And, of course, having these mana gives me access to spells, much more interesting

Chaos mana:
Chaos 1: Dance of Blades - a 1 turn promotion to all units in a stack, gives +1 first strike. Not awesome, but nevertheless quite useful. It'll stack with my first strike chance from Commando, which ought to turn even battles into battles in my favor. Since it doesn't last, though, I'll have to keep an adept with my stack to use it, limiting my mobility somewhat.

Chaos 2: Mutation - Mutates the unit, giving them a 8% chance per promotion of gaining any of a quite long list. Most are situational but handy - resist fire, for instance, but there's a chance of Weak, Crazed, Enraged, Diseased, or Withered. It appears that on average, a mutated unit is a stronger unit, but it is of course chaotic and unplanned or controlled. A unit can only be mutated once. I should either not even touch this spell, or use it with wild abandon. It especially makes sense to use on obsolete units, to hopefully get more use out of them, or if I have a way to dispose of the bad results and still get something useful. Nothing in particular comes to mind, however.

Chaos 3: Wonder - Casts 3-5 spells or other effects (can spawn Penguins, create Hell terrain, etc) chosen randomly from a 66 item list. This could be fun; but it's unlikely to be useful. On the other hand, none of the spells are bad for me, so long as I control the circumstances - if I'm on one stack, casting next to an enemy stack, I'll injure them or buff my own stack with just about any option. Still, I doubt I'll have much use for this one, because I don't want to commit to battle unless I think I've got the edge - which doesn't include 'stand next to the enemy until I get lucky'

A final thought - this might be a way to acquire buffs like enchanted blade that I can't be bothered with getting conventionally - stack up my army in a wasteland somewhere, and keep casting Wonder until I get what I want out of it. There's probably an easier way to get what I want, though.

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Water mana:
Water 1:[/COLOR] Spring. This puts out fires on surrounding tiles, and converts desert to plains. Does not, I believe, convert Flaming Sands into Broken Lands, but it might at least put out the flames temporarily to allow me to cross. I definitely want this! With a big desert on my border, with probably Malakim on the other side, and good chances of fires from Sheaim or Hyborem, there will be all sorts of uses for it. Especially if I'm defending against the Malakim, I want to eliminate deserts!

Water 2: Water walking - lets the caster walk on water tiles like a Drown or Stygian. Honestly - not that useful. If it gave a whole stack the promotion, I could think of lots of uses, but it's not going to be common for it to benefit me to put my mages to sea, and not be able to stick them in a boat.

Water 3: Summon Water Elemental. This could be handy . Water Elementals are Str 8, +1 Affinity for Water mana (so effectively at least Str 9), and have a unique ability - when killed, they're replaced by two Weak, injured water elementals. (they split Strong -> 2 Normal -> 4 Weak -> Dead). Especially if I get the Tower of the Elements, this could be handy for putting bodies in front of an attack. Still, with a maximum of 9 archmages to cast it (and then only if I get a Death mana), and Str 9 not that impressive by the time archmages come around...I won't build any plans around these.

[COLOR="silver"]Air Mana:
Air 1:[/COLOR] Fair Winds. A promotion for naval units, which gives them +1 movement, +25% withdrawal chance, 50% chance/turn to wear off. Just in case my innate +1 move isn't enough . I should also aim for circumnavigation, for a net +3 to my naval movement rate; that starts to get speedy!

Air 2: Maelstrom. Now we're talking . Damages all units within two squares of the caster ~15%, with a limit of 30% damage. Doesn't sound like that much, until you take into account the nature of Civ combat, where Str is proportional to health^2 or health^3 - a complete Maelstromed stack is at least halved in combat effectiveness. There are stronger options, but none that can be mass produced like this

Air 3: Summon Air Elemental - Summons a Str 5 + 2 Lightning + 1 air affinity Air Elemental - net of Str 8. And flying . These have an odd bonus - after a victorious combat, they spawn Str 3 lightning elementals. Again, nice units - except that I'm limited by the number of Archmages, who will probably have better things to do. Lightning elementals are probably amusing but worthless; I want living units to clean up nearly dead units for the XP, not temporary elementals, and by the time archmages are walking the earth, Str 3 is underwhelming to say the least.

[COLOR="Yellow"]Sun Mana:
Sun 1:[/COLOR] Scorch - turns plains to desert, and snow to tundra. Useful if I mess up with Spring, possibly to turn a poor fishing village to a mediocre fishing village near a pole, and to create defensive terrain if I'm not worried about the Malakim. I don't expect a lot of use from this, but it could be nice to have.

Sun 2: Blinding Light - only affects enemies, who are unable to move for 2 turns. . Wow! Paralyze a big stack while I whittle it down slowly, or paralyze it while I instead bypass it and strike something vulnerable. This - this is going to be nice It does have a 30% resist chance, but stack multiple castings and I shouldn't have much to worry about there.

Sun 3: Summon Aurealis - an Aurealis is Str 6, +2 Affinity for Sun mana. Again, mostly underwhelming - unless I get a lot of Sun mana in my empire; then these can get to be very nasty units. They grow a lot faster than the other elementals. Still limited by the number of Archmagi, but if I combine them with Blinding Light, I have a lot more flexibility with them; whittling down a paralyzed stack with summons could be a lot of fun Still, by the time I have Archmagi in my empire, I ought to have something better to hit stacks with.

So, to conclude - I'm definitely going to want a bunch of adepts - all my lvl 1 spells are handy. Mages, too, will be a lot of fun with Blinding Light and Maelstrom; maybe stick Mutation on one. Archmagi, on the other hand, aren't going to be vital unless I find a lvl 3 spell in a different domain and use my free node for that. I should get to them eventually, of course, but it's certainly not a priority with these mana types.

And, I happened to look up Chalid along the way - he's pretty awesome too, with his Pillar of Fire that only targets enemies and does 50% damage, max of 75% I'm going to have to take the time later for a comparative religions course , but Empyrean is looking like a fun way to go!

[Selrahc]

Still, I doubt I'll have much use for this one, because I don't want to commit to battle unless I think I've got the edge - which doesn't include 'stand next to the enemy until I get lucky'

I actually quite like Wonder. With 3-5 spell effects going off, you're likely to get at least 1 summon, and sometimes more, as well as damaging spells, debuffs or buffs. About the only *really* annoying thing it does is cast escape which teleports your caster back to your capital.

who will probably have better things to do.

I'm curious what you think a better thing to do for an Archmage would be? They cast the best summon spell you have. That is pretty much the use for an Archmage.

There are a couple of oddball schools, with Ice and Entropy being the most notable, but almost every L3 attack spell is a summon.. if you think those are wastes then what is the point of archmages at all?

[Bobchillingworth]

Mutation is an awesome spell, because most of the nasty effects (withered, diseased, plagued) can be easily fixed by priests. I wouldn't cast it on a vital hero unless you want to really gamble, but you can get some really neat results, particularly blitz


Chalid is even better than you describe. His Crown of Brilliance spell only has like a 25% chance of wearing off every turn, so if you have it active and position him correctly you can potentially hit an enemy city / stack with *two* very powerful collateral spells in one turn. And if you promote him to Law III he can grant himself (and any other discipline units with him) Valor, for even more bonuses! And the Empyrean lets you build ratha (or Radiant Guard) for all your Sun II needs. Sadly the priests utterly suck until Tier III.

[Mardoc]

I'm curious what you think a better thing to do for an Archmage would be? They cast the best summon spell you have. That is pretty much the use for an Archmage.

There are a couple of oddball schools, with Ice and Entropy being the most notable, but almost every L3 attack spell is a summon.. if you think those are wastes then what is the point of archmages at all?

I must not have gotten to archmages often enough to understand, but I was under the impression that the L3 spells would be mostly direct damage like Snowfall, rather than those being the exception. Or, well, I used mainly Fire Elementals in Adventure 1, which did nice collateral damage in addition to their damage of the top unit - not officially damaging every unit, but in effect accomplishing the same goal. It just seems to me that National, limited units ought to be game changers, and as nice as a throwaway unit is, it's not going to make that much difference, particularly in MP late game where it's rare to have a war of attrition.

Pretty much the only way they make sense to me is combining summons with Blinding light or Slow, because they could turn a good hammer exchange ratio into an infinite ratio. But otherwise, it seems to me that summons are only useful once in the war - when you're about to hit the enemy stack or hero.

Compared to Snowfall, Wither, Lichdom, Graft Flesh, Spellstaff, Domination, Vitalize, elementals just seem underpowered to me. Unless I manage to get a LOT of mana, so I can expect the elementals to be my strongest units instead of just my cheapest. And if I'm going that route, I expect Sun III to be the way to go.

I actually quite like Wonder. With 3-5 spell effects going off, you're likely to get at least 1 summon, and sometimes more, as well as damaging spells, debuffs or buffs. About the only *really* annoying thing it does is cast escape which teleports your caster back to your capital.

Thinking about this more, I tend to agree - it's at least as powerful as most of the other Tier III spells; 17 of the 66 spells are summons, so yes, odds are that it's at least one summon plus whatever other handy stuff you get; it does appear to be the best option I have for archmagi, unless I end up with so much mana that I change my mind on the pure summons.

Mutation is an awesome spell, because most of the nasty effects (withered, diseased, plagued) can be easily fixed by priests. I wouldn't cast it on a vital hero unless you want to really gamble, but you can get some really neat results, particularly blitz

Oh? I thought only diseased was fixable, but if most of the bad stuff is also fixable, then this does become a very nice tool. I still probably only want one or two mages with it, because I can cycle my whole army through one city with a Chaos mage and a priest . If I can make Mutation a Heads I win, Tails you lose scenario, then it'll definitely be worth using.

Ok, looking at it further, it appears that Weak, Crazed, and Enraged are the only uncurable bad results, and Enraged is even sometimes survivable. So I like the odds of that

[Selrahc]

Compared to Snowfall, Wither, Lichdom, Graft Flesh, Spellstaff, Domination, Vitalize, elementals just seem underpowered to me. Unless I manage to get a LOT of mana, so I can expect the elementals to be my strongest units instead of just my cheapest. And if I'm going that route, I expect Sun III to be the way to go.

You do definitely need to put aside 2 or 3 mana for affinities. Sun doesn't actually start to pull ahead until 5 or 6 mana have been put aside for it though, and that is a *lot*. (You put 4 mana into a fire, water, earth or air elemental and 4 mana into a sun elemental. The sun elemental is about as tough, but doesn't get any nifty additional features.)

They aren't really underpowered. It's not a stack killer, like Snowfall or Wither, but it takes out the top defenders in a stack for no cost to you. And you're only going to need to wither them once... the other 3 archmages need to do something too. Or acts as powerful disposable meatshields. Domination I would actually put in the same class as summon spells. It has the exact same role, but it has additional strengths and weaknesses.

Things like Lichdom, Enchant Spellstaff, Valour, Trust, Vitalize etc. aren't battlefield spells. They have entirely different functions.

If you're talking the most effective thing for an archmage to do each turn of battle, it is probably to summon something. If you've got no other spellcasters in the area then it might be more effective to cast something like Maelstrom or Blinding light, but I would assume that you normally have mages in the area to take care of that stuff. Battle Archmages are summoners.

[Mardoc]

Things like Lichdom, Enchant Spellstaff, Valour, Trust, Vitalize etc. aren't battlefield spells. They have entirely different functions.

Well, that's true. There's no reason to plan on my archmages having only one spell - they could Vitalize in peacetime and summon elementals at war ([SIZE="1"]assuming I get the appropriate mana; otherwise there'll be nothing for them to do but summon[/SIZE]). And you make a good point about stacking spells, too; 4 elementals is clearly better than 2, but 4 Withers...isn't. Plus, well, I won't change the mana I have just by wishing it were otherwise; I'd better plan on using it.

Part of why I think the Aurealis might be the way to go, however, is that I'm currently leaning toward Empyrean and Chalid, so I'd want Sun mana anyway, and would get some for free if I can manage to found the shrine. I won't settle on that, though, until I have time to analyze the religions and discuss them, and even then I expect my plans to change when I meet the enemy.

In the game, good stuff is happening. My first pirate port is complete! Currently a 4/2/7 tile; I expect to eventually add a lighthouse and Heron Throne to that yield as well.

I finished Exploration and the winery - in time to discover that I didn't need a road for my wines after all; apparently the river connects them to the capital, although I hadn't thought it would when my capital isn't on the river. Oh well, at least I can connect the rice and my cities together. I'd have wanted Exploration anyway shortly.

On to Mining. Working the port, the harbor, and the wines, I'm finally first in GNP; this only makes sense for the moment because I'm focused on growth/settler, but it's handy regardless. Time to take my rightful position at the head of the pack!

And, I'm still letting Cap'n Crunch grow for the moment instead of starting the Settler immediately. This is perhaps a mistake; I might change course next turn.