[SPOILERS] Tales from the Enchanted Forest - Thessa of the Ljosalfar

[Nyktorion]

Turn 49

Another cottage is finished, and one worker is already walking towards the cows, anticipating animal husbandry, and putting a turn into a cottage on the way.

Hyll has finished its monument and is training another warrior now.

• Sciz and Sir Yellow each got a tech this turn.
  
• Glens of Killybegs grew again
  
• Sciz's capital is size 7 now
  
• Another warrior was trained somewhere
  
• Somebody got a great sage (WarriorKnight now?)
  
  

[Nyktorion]

Diplo update; some points off the top of my head from my discussions with WarriorKnight (already lost the log):

• We now have a NAP until turn 100
  
• Not much outside contact for both of us; both only saw a few anmals at their borders during the last turns
  
• WarriorKnight brought up the topic of further cooperation, possibly through exchanging maps and some day getting trade connections via cartography; however, we concluded that this will still take a while, since both of us have other research priorities currently (I told him about my - obvious? - religion plans, but he didn't specify further).
  
• Also concluded that it will take some time till we have trade connections: there is no river connection, but quite some distance between capitals. Even a coastal conection would require him to find a coast (so the two nonland tiles in Glens of Killybegs are lake or peak tiles, I suppose?), and some techs.
  
• Confirmed our neighbour locations again. I met Yellow west of myself/north of him (in sandy terrain), and he met Irgy south of himself (both times, only scouts were seen). We don't really know about Mardoc and Sciz yet, though Mardoc might be somewhere in that very sandy Bannor terrain.
  
• He mentioned Sciz's religion founding. I told him I noticed as well, and it was very likely by that great prophet. Tak about great persons in this game concluded in him confirming to me that Irgy had indeed switched to pacifism together with God King.
  
• I asked him about his most feared enemies, and he his answer included both Lanun and Malakim. I told him that I already fear the Malakim more. I did not tell him my C&D about him (I already had the impression there was more information flow from me than from him in this talk), but I at least said that I had "reason to believe that he has a significant number of flood plains in the capital". He answered that that's of course normal, but still, in SP; I have also already seen more desert heavy Malakim starts (which I told him).
  
• Last, he confirmed that the most recent great sage was indeed his.
  

[Nyktorion]

Turn 50

Animal Husbandry is in! Sadly, there are no horses on the visible part of the map.

Worker #1 immediately starts pasturing the cows. Worker #2 is moving towards the cows, putting another turn into a cottage. Worker #3 moved onto the sheep. The next research project will be mysticism, which finally brings us onto the research line to our forest religion.



WarriorKnight got a tech this turn. The global soldier count shrank by 5k, and the rival worst is at 12k now. So somebody lost a scout, somebody gained a warrior, and the Runes of Kilmorph were spread in Sciz' capital. The last part is confirmed by a quick look at the religion screen:



Concerning my future expansion plans: the next settler will be finished very soon, and I plan to get yet another settler not too long after that. Here is a map showing what I have in mind for the new city sites:



Bruti should still be founded rather close to my previous two cities, i.e. at the yellow or the green dot. The green dot has the advantage that all tiles east of the mountain range could be nicely worked on by our cities. On the other hand, this would make Bruti a city just one tile away from the coast; this could be repaired by settling on the yellow dot, for instance. Currently, I'm leaning towards settling on the green dot.

Yonna is then planned to be our border city towards the Elohim, and grab the death mana and the pigs in the south. I want to found it on the blue or on the red dot. The red dot is using the available tiles better, but the blue dot is less agressive. I prefer the red dot here.

[Nyktorion]

State of the Ljosalfar Empire

Our ranking in the demo is still about the same as in the previous turns.



As seen on all the previous screenshots, we are last in score. The difference is marginal, and mostly explained by our lack of land points due to the coastal capital. Sciz is leading due to his extra religion tech from the great prophet. On the other hand, WarriorKnight really seems to be picking up some speed in gaining population and techs. Still, with our cottages just being at the start of their growth, and our expansive settlers, I'm confident that this is not really too bad. Here is the graph for the whole history of the civs we have contact with:



We are #5 in GNP; only Sir Yellow is behind us. As I said, I hope (and am quite confident) that those early cottages will repair that.



We are last in production; this is also witnessed by our low soldier count.



Our crop yield is quite good, but WarriorKnight is now ahead of us; in the chat today he mentioned his agrarianistic farms as likely reason for that (he very probably has more than our two farms). Sir Yellow (also in Agrariasnism) seems to be catching up quite well, too.



Soldier count: this one is looking quite bad. Still, with NAP protection against WarriorKnight until T100, and Sir Yellow being even further away, I don't fear that I'd need those soldiers anytime soon. In case Orthus shows up at our doorsteps, we have two more warriors in the pipeline.



The culture graph does not say much yet. However, it still shows anarchy phases, and who ran religion for how long, quite nicely. With the monument in Hyll, our culture is now starting to get ahead, as shown by the bend in the top right corner of the graph.



Evermore is not in the top 5 cities anymore. However, it is another tracker for the state of the other capitals. #1 is Malakim, #2 is Lanun, and #5 is Sheaim.



Next, here is an inside view of Evermore. It nicely shows the (by FFH standard) high settler production speed. About 1/3 of that is regular hammers, 1/3 is food overflow (that corn tile is quite nice), and the last 1/3 is the expansive bonus.



Finally, the Hyll city screen:

[Nyktorion]

Turn 51

All workers are on pasturing duty now, the cow tile will be finished next turn.



Foreign news:

• Graphs show that the scout lost last turn was Sir Yellows (which was the scout I mistook for the hunting tech earlier)
  
• Sciz's second city grew again this turn
  
• Irgy got a pop point. Total land are rose by 5k. And I don't see how this adds up with two cities being size 7 now Looks like I'll have to do another C&D consolidation update rather soon, or I'll get completely lost in those numbers; good thing I saved at least score screenshots and the demo of each turn, that might allow me to reconstruct some things I missed over time...
  

[Nyktorion]

Turn 52

The cow pasture is finished, the workers will now build a road there. Also, Evermore will finish another settler next turn, so I already moved to warriors (1 from each city) into position to guard the settler on the founding site of Bruti next turn. Also, there are some goblins at our borders again, and also the Combat II griffon pays another visit (meaning that he is not in the south of Evermore).



Glens of Killybegs and Vallus each grew this turn. Soldier count just increased by 1k; however, I did not mention a global 10k increase last turn!

Diplo time: Sir Yellow has sent a request for some information

Hello, Nyktorion.

How has your search for other civilizations gone? Some time ago we have made contact with Sciz of the Malakim, situatied somewhere south.
At the time of contact Sciz hasn't met any other civilizations other than us Bannors and were gonna search for more west. Haven't heard from him since then.
Our current concern are the mysterious people called the Sheaim, hiding somewhere out there. Were deadly afraid of what they could do and our mystics believe they will take the path
of aggression soon enough. It would be greatly apprechiated if you could share some news of your peoples journeys and the possible location of the Sheaim.

Sir Yellow, worried Chief Advisor of the Bannors.

Well, he provided some information on the Malakim, so I'll happily tell him what I know about the Sheaim. Also, I have wanted to just contact the Bannor a few times now (just to keep in touch), but I did not find a good opportunity at those times. So I add in some more chat, telling some him more information to further our relationship, and also ask him some things I'd be interested in knowing.

Dear Sir Yellow,

I am afraid to say that we have not made any contacts beside your empire and the Elohim, which we have told you about upon our initial contact. However, we can indeed offer you a bit of information about these "Sheaim", which the Elohim have told us about. According to Einion MonkKnight, their supreme leader, a Sheaim scout has reached their borders from the south.

Thanks for telling us about the Malakim! Am I correct in assuming that they are rather located south of your own empire, which would amount to something southwest of our scouts' initial meeting point? We have heard rumors about the great prosperity of these desert people, do you know more about the extent to which they are true?

It has been a long time since we last met, how have things been going for the Bannor during that time? As for the Ljosalfar, we have largely stayed within our own borders, and were largely focused on the prosperity of our own people so far. Also, travelers coming to Evermore have told stories about your empire developing in a similar direction; according to them, your initial city of Torrolerial has already grown quite nicely, and there are also stories about the recent founding of another Bannor city; congratulations on your empire's thriving!

Last, some of the recent stories that came to my ears were quite terrible: they talk about a brutal orcish king marauding the lands, but there is no information about his whereabouts yet. Do you know more about him? Luckily, we have not spotted him next to our own borders yet.

wishing you the best,
-- Nyktorion of the Ljosalfar

On Orthus: I have not seen him yet, and the map does not center anywhere when I click on his message in the event log. I assume he did not spawn near Ljosalfar territory.

[Nyktorion]

Turn 53

Our settller is finished! He and the two warriors I sent out last turn moved to the square I want to found Bruti on next turn. I have decided that I'd like to take the green tile from my settling plan.

The cow road is finished as well, and is moving towards Bruti, too. He put another turn into the open-grassland cottage; next turn he will get started on the missing road piece between Evermore and Bruti, and the cottage will be finished by the other cow worker.

Hyll finished its second warrior, which is quite welcome considering the goblin on the fur tile. If the goblin moves towards Hyll next turn, that allows me to take the risk of promoting the other warrior to Combat I and attacking.



Mardoc founded his second city this turn, so everyone has two cities now (I have started on my C&D consolidation yesterday, and one thing I found out was that Irgy's 6-point increase on T51 was due to the founding of a second city, and Mardoc's capital is indeed the second 7-pop city). Soldier count rose by 1k, which is just the expected +1k from Mardoc's 8th total pop point.

Another interesting point in the demo is that the rival best GNP has increased to 52. The GNP graph suggests that this rival best is not Sciz anymore; could it be that the true runaway will not be the Malakim?



Another diplo message from the Bannor arrived:

Us Bannors are doing fine for now, although our exploration trips have gone badly so far. Our scouts having seen little more but sand everywhere we've been and were sadly mauled by monsters and one of the rare dune bears.
We have seen nothing of this orc king, but are being plagued by an infamous mutated giant named Dagan-Gannd roaming the nearby lands. I got suspicions that the Malakim may have awakened this foul beast. Hope your situation isn't as dire.
Speaking of these Malakim, I have no idea of exactly where they might be in the south, but we're sure their lands are quite prosperous and their wealth intimidating.

We will look out for possible trading oppurtunities in the near future and have heard rumors of good quality dyes begin made in the eastern woods.
Maybe we can offer you something of worth by then.

Nice to know about Orthus and Dagan-Gannd. The wording "intimidating" with respect to the Malakim is also good to know: so Sir Yellow appears not to be too happy with Sciz's growth either.

The last paragraph tells me that he has been doing at least some basic C&D (might be more than that, though); he just got my specific plantation resource wrong.

So I thought I'd let him know a small bit of C&D of my own too. I figured that the best thing to share with him was my early game speculation about Sciz's 5-7 flood plains and his free great merchant. With access to Sciz's graphs, and his obvious C&D-ing at least at a basic level, it should be easy for Sir Yellow to verify this. If these speculations are indeed true, I hope this rubs in Mr. Yellow's envy of Sciz's position some more.

Looking at this message now, I hope I haven't worded it too in-character for the actual message to get lost.

We have similar scouting problems as those you are mentioning. While we have not seen any giants or dune bears yet, there are quite a few goblins and griffons around our lands.

We are not producing any dyes in our lands. Still, I can imagine quite well see how those might have reached you, and these rumors do indeed have a piece of truth in them. In fact, I am quite pleased with the silk we have in our lands. While we are of course open for trades with other nations, I fear that our distance currently makes finding a good route for transporting any trading goods difficult. Of course, this may change later.

Speaking of these rumors about dyes and silks, I have knowledge of rumors, whose accuracy I estimate to be of a similar quality, about the Malakim. They say that, even though the Malakim generally live in the sands, the have settled in an area where a significant portion of the land has been made very fertile by a nearby river which floods these lands occasionally. Further, we have heard the tales of a religion praying to the earthmother being founded by an enlightened prophet of the Malakim. Finally, there are less consistent rumors about another great man who is very rich and joined the Malakim only a few years after the end of the ice age. Since you live closer to the Malakim than we do, you might have more accurate information about them; can that confirm or deny these rumors?

[uberfish]

LOL haven't you guys gotten tired of translating game mechanics into in-character speak yet? It took me about 2 turns.

[T-hawk]

LOL haven't you guys gotten tired of translating game mechanics into in-character speak yet? It took me about 2 turns.

I learned that lesson back in trying to write about Diablo 2. "An Amazon of the thirty-seventh circle, with fourteen ranks of knowledge of the art of incendiary arrows, found a bow enchanted to be one hundred sixty-five percent more capable of stopping evil..."

[Nyktorion]

LOL haven't you guys gotten tired of translating game mechanics into in-character speak yet? It took me about 2 turns.

I learned that lesson back in trying to write about Diablo 2. "An Amazon of the thirty-seventh circle, with fourteen ranks of knowledge of the art of incendiary arrows, found a bow enchanted to be one hundred sixty-five percent more capable of stopping evil..."

No You might be witnessing the first steps in my learning of that lesson right now though...

C&D consolidation

I have gone through the score and demo information of the last 50 turns again, and now things are adding up nicely again. Here is what I came up with. Note that, due to being able to see their graphs (particularly GNP and Power), I can make speculations about WarriorKnight and Sir Yellow with much greater accuracy than about the other civs.

WarriorKnight
Techs: Ancient Chants (T0), free tech - Exploration? (T1), Agriculture (T8), Mysticism (T24), Crafting (T34), Calendar (T41), Education (T50)
Military: 25k soldiers: 5k from pop, 2k from a scout, 18k from 6 warriors
Cities: Cahir Abbey (size 6, has academy), Glens of Killybegs (size 4)
Misc info: NAP until T100, has met Irgy, southwest of us, great sage founded academy in T50

Irgy
Techs: Ancient Chants (T0), Mysticism (T15), Crafting? (T24), Mining? (T34), Agriculture? (T38), Exploration? (T41)
Military: sharing 59k soldiers with Mardoc and Sciz (48k of those are actual units)
Cities: Capital (size 5), Secondcity (size 1)
Misc info: has met WarriorKight, south of WarriorKight, great sage at T37

Sir Yellow
Techs: Exploration (T0), Agriculture/Ancient Chants (T9), Agriculture/Ancient Chants (T15), Calendar/Mysticism (T40), Calendar/Mysticism (T41), Crafting (T49)
Military: 18k soldiers: 4k from pop, 2k from a scout, 12k from 3 warriors
Cities: Torrolerial (size 6), Vallus (size 3)
Misc info: west of us (desert inbetween), has met Sciz, probably switched between techs a few times (out of indecision? to confuse C&D'ers? at least GNP/beaker-wise, that would add up exactly with him having Agriculture+Chants by T15, and Calendar+Mysticism by T41)

Mardoc
Techs: Seafaring (T0), Fishing (T11), mystery free tech (T11), one further tech each at T18, T27, T33, T36, T42
Military: sharing 59k soldiers with Irgy and Sciz (48k of those are actual units)
Cities: Capital (size 7), Secondcity (size 1)
Misc info: none

Sciz
Techs: Ancient Chants (T0), Mysticism (T12), Agriculture? (T17), Crafting (T25), Mining (T38), Way of the Earthmother (T42), mystery second column tech (T48)
Military: sharing 59k soldiers with Irgy and Mardoc (48k of those are actual units)
Cities: Capital (size 7), Secondcity (size 2, RoK holy city)
Misc: has met Sir Yellow, south of Sir Yellow, great merchant settled in capital at T6, start with 5-7 flood plains, used great prophet to bulb RoK tech in T42, claims in tech thread to have defeated Orthus