[Spoilers] Defining the phrase "€˜Hung Like a Horse"€™: Pb & the Kuriotates

[Cyneheard]

If it's Alpha Centauri, it's Alien Crossfire, because it's none of the original seven.

[NobleHelium]

Definitely not Miriam, since it's not a woman. I'd say it's the drone leader, Foreman Domai? I forget his name exactly.

[T-hawk]

I don't think it's Alpha Centauri. I remember the "captured faction leader" movie as looking different than that, with the victim inside a Punishment Sphere. Also I'm pretty sure the AC movie was generic and not specific to the faction leader, vague enough that you can't tell gender, with a male or female scream just dubbed in as appropriate.

Can't play AC right now to verify, but I can look at the files on my home PC that's VPNed to the office, and there are files "loseman.wve" and "losewoman.wve" in the movies folder.

[Darkmantle]

The sharped Eyed will spot that you changed your name to "A.I. died" for the final Caledor shot. Which incidentatly now has a sexy 5 enclaves.

The game is of course Pax Imperia:Eminent Domain. Yes I did find the clue in the picture links. Your work never goes unappreciated

I'm confused why you are building a gambling house in Caledor. Is it so that when you go 100% gold you get a bunch of we love the dragon posessed monarch days? With the huge amount of gold you have atm though you will probably be running 100% science for a while yet.

Were you looking forward to pillaging all of those beautiful Elven cottages?

Is there a particular reason for the hunting lodge in Caledor? I can't forsee it making many units atm with its massive food surplus that you want to turn into population points.

I also notice with disapproval that you haven't managed to maintain number 1 position in every catergory except imports/exports. Just because Hyborem doesn't have any unhappiness at all is no excuse!

[pocketbeetle]

The trapped leader definately looks like Alpha Centauri. I don't recognise the actual leader that's there though. Could be Myriam but I don't think it is.

Alpha Centauri is a good guess, the only problem is that would be too easy for a Civ board and definitely wouldn't need any hints.

If it's Alpha Centauri, it's Alien Crossfire, because it's none of the original seven.

Definitely not Miriam, since it's not a woman. I'd say it's the drone leader, Foreman Domai? I forget his name exactly.

Chairman Yang?
I'm not certain either.

I don't think it's Alpha Centauri. I remember the "captured faction leader" movie as looking different than that, with the victim inside a Punishment Sphere. Also I'm pretty sure the AC movie was generic and not specific to the faction leader, vague enough that you can't tell gender, with a male or female scream just dubbed in as appropriate.
Can't play AC right now to verify, but I can look at the files on my home PC that's VPNed to the office, and there are files "loseman.wve" and "losewoman.wve" in the movies folder.

The sharped Eyed will spot that you changed your name to "A.I. died" for the final Caledor shot. Which incidentatly now has a sexy 5 enclaves.

The game is of course Pax Imperia:Eminent Domain. Yes I did find the clue in the picture links. Your work never goes unappreciated

I'm impressed, good job.

Pax Imperia is a reasonably old game now.
It falls in the usual category of being a galactic empire building game, but instead attempted it in real-time instead of turn based, which often led to some frantic clicking and ramping down of the game speed in order to compete with the AI.

It worked okay, but didn't sell very well. One of the best features of it was the fully customisable ship design, based on what weapon techs you'd researched.
Good stuff.

I'm confused why you are building a gambling house in Caledor. Is it so that when you go 100% gold you get a bunch of we love the dragon posessed monarch days? With the huge amount of gold you have atm though you will probably be running 100% science for a while yet.

Need moar gold!!!
Gambling houses provide +3gpt, combined with all the multipliers in Caledor that works out as +7.5ish gpt, which for a virtual 1t build I figure is worth it. I'm not worried about the happy, nor the increased maintenance it brings seeing as Caledor is the capital.

With no war weariness and almost every luxury resource in the game, happy caps are no problem at the moment.

Were you looking forward to pillaging all of those beautiful Elven cottages?

I am!

Is there a particular reason for the hunting lodge in Caledor? I can't forsee it making many units atm with its massive food surplus that you want to turn into population points.

Avelorn is the GP farm, as such health is important.
It's also got the lowest happy cap of all the megacities since I've been avoiding happy buildings like the public baths there, eventually hoping for the ToC to take over and make happiness irrelevant.

Hunting lodges add +1 health (Deer) and +1 happy (fur) which Avelorn could do with in the interval between building the ToC, plus it's only a 1t build. I emphasised food in Avelorn last turn, putting in lowly ~18 hammers into the lodge. Next turn I'll rushbuy it and overflow that turn's hammers back into the ToC.
You're 100% right about me wanting to grow Avelorn though, and I'm taking the opportunity that this damn slow build provides.

tl dr answer: +1 health.

I also notice with disapproval that you haven't managed to maintain number 1 position in every catergory except imports/exports. Just because Hyborem doesn't have any unhappiness at all is no excuse!

I know.
Better not look at those demographics too closely, because once Selrahc takes all those heavily farmed Dwarven cities, he's going to have a higher Crop Yield than me.
Population amuses me though: if you count the numbers you'll see the Kurios are larger by a factor of 10, something like 44mil to 3 mil. :rolleyes:


Diplo:

Saw you took out the vamps. Good work. I sent you the 5gp, as well as the 200 I owed you.

If you want to have a chat some time on what the next stage is, send me a message.

[pocketbeetle]

Turn 194:

As promised, Selrahc sent me some gold, trade screen shows he’s captured three Dwarven cities now.



Including the capital, Khazak.



Those two Dwarven workers happily chopping in the middle of a warzone (centre screen) are offending my sensibilities, so I sent a CA to go capture and delete them.

Hyborem has put all those manes to work and now has a size 25 capital:



Pretty sure that unit naming scheme was Bob’s.

Avelorn’s mana node has been converted to Fire, which along with ATM’s node makes two so far, one more to go.



You can see Caledor’s node has already been dispelled.

A barb city has sprung up in the Acaia river basin, which translates to more xp plus a free settlement!



Over in the East, I sent Elatus to clear the Lizardman off the ruins and then explored.



Received a Plagued promotion for my trouble, but that can be cured by a priest.
To be on the safe side, I moved Dumbo to cover Elatus.

Defogging the SE also uncovered a second barb city (guarded by two Weak str 2/4 archers) and a skeleton barrow.



Exploring that gave a little bit of gold.

Pillaged a ton of roads and farms on the Krinera/Illian/Khazad border, including the grassland Gems since there’s no need for more spares.



Ending turn completed the hunting lodge in Avelorn and a cultist.



Research completed on Religious Law, now onto Iron Working.

[pocketbeetle]

Diplo:

The Illians want to know what's going to happen next.
For me the path is clear: I want to move quickly on the Svartalfar and Infernals - as Darkmantle pointed out there are some tasty towns at Nameless Tower that I certainly don't want anyone else getting ideas about.

So of course, I'd better lay that out in plain English to Selrahc.

Hey,

Sorry slow reply.
Thanks for the 20(5) gold.

As for next stage, Hyborem spawned South of the former Hippus lands, his capital is already 25 pop from all the dead vampire manes.
However it looks like Bob has given up, soI'd say there's no real threat.
I'm leaving it to you to finish off Cull asap; Sareln and Hyborem I'll pick off in the near future.
Let me know if you've got any ideas.

Regards,
Pb

Or maybe not.
Maybe I'll just hedge around the issue and go ahead anyway.
That works for me too!

Well, what I was thinking about was this.

The game is down to just you and me now, effectively. We've got a NAP until 220.
I'm perfectly willing to concede the game to you, since its pretty obvious that you have a dominant position (And deservingly so. You've clearly played a great game here).

However, if you've got the will, I'm happy to go on. It should be a pretty fast turn rate once we've taken out the other players, and I'd like to finish this game with something exciting.

If you want to go for a peaceful victory, I'm fine with that, we can sign a NAP and see who can finish faster.

If you want to win militarily, that's cool with me too. I'll get my defences prepared between now and T220, and hopefully go out with a bang.

Okay, he was thinking more long term.
I knew how I wanted to answer this straight away, but the reply gets put on hold for a while.

[pocketbeetle]

Turn 195:

Religious Law splashscreen on loading:



Turnlog tells me that the Illians are experiencing a few minor blips over in the East.



If you remember, Selrahc told me in a diplo message not too long ago, that he was holding off from taking the Dwarven capital to prevent an easy retake.
It would appear Cull managed to do so anyway, which means that not only is Khazak unlikely to have any surviving buildings in it, but it also lost another pop.

Over in Satan’s playground, that worker has stopped building a workshop and has instead started on a road between Despero and Dis.



I’ve been eyeing it up for a couple of turns now, and at this distance the opportunity is just way too tempting for the Mobility promoted Dictys.



One deletion later and a Sprint back to Murousbane, there’s virtually no trace of his escapades.
Dave still managed to figure it out though, and made this post in the tech thread.
It occurs to me now that I’ve not made a suitable reply. Fixed.

Completing 3 Fire nodes means I can upgrade some adepts to mages, including RtM.



Free Fire II: Fireball promotions are always good.

RtM can reach C5 if I straight promote him up the Combat line, but I’m going to avoid going above C4 for the moment.
That means if I ever take him to archmage he’ll be able to pick up Snowfall straight away (one promotion in hand plus free archmage promotion on upgrading).

Quick celebratory note for the first Citadel in Kurio territory.
That one adds +15% fortification bonus to both Avelorn and KK, taking them up to 45% even without walls.



Meanwhile the 1st Cultist Exploratory Division sets off from the coast of Kywthellar.



Relatives waved them off, hopefully their wives have packed lots of rations to tide them over.

Ending turn completed a mish-mash of stuff including the first Centaur Charger (CC) in KK.
Broke 1k beakers per turn. :dancing5:



And I’ll insert a brief note here to say that there’s lots of pillaging going on offscreen in the Lightly Scorched lands.

[pocketbeetle]

Turn 196:

Quiet turn this one. The Svartalfar received some sort of an event, while Hell terrain is spreading to neutral lands.



The 1st CED boards an infamous haunted wreck near Kwythellar.
Search results produce absolutely nothing, turns out it’s just an ordinary fishing boat that grounded in a storm.



Converted the Fuerte mana node to a Mind node, added about 15 beakers to the base rate. :zzz:



Ending turn completed a couple of CCs and some borders expanded.



Remember how I said I was doing a bit of pillaging?



Much better!
Compare with this screenshot to see the difference.

The road network is a lot cleaner for starters. Any units attacking from the North that want to reach the Southern settlements pretty much have to go through Prespur, or face a rough terrain crossing.

[pocketbeetle]

Turn 197:

Well that was a boring turn wasn’t it? Fear not!
Cunningly posted across the GMT timegap to cover two days (you’ll not get my precious CAs that easily you horrible lurkers!), this one gets a little more interesting at the end.

Iron Working tech splashscreen:



Coupled with lots of units being upgraded to Iron weapons (mostly the mercenaries).

Over in the East, the Illians are slowly and steadily making their way across the Khazad empire.



I can see why Cull was able to retake his capital though: Selrahc seems to have a habit of leaving newly captured cities unguarded.

At Morr’ta’nar, Hemah is nearly 37 xp for C3, while my pet Stigmata cultist cured Elatus of his plague.



That wandering Orc was munched on by Arktus from across the river (still at 99% odds) to give 26 xp.

Ending turn completed a gambling house and smokehouse, KK grew while building a training yard.



So where’s the interesting stuff?
Well… there’s always this.

1E of Morr’ta’nar is a group of two workers guarded by an Ice Elemental.

Doesn’t really take a psychic to work out what happens next turn, does it?