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

[Sciz]

lol, seems like Sir Yellow liked your message much more than mine even though we meant pretty much the same thing.

I didn't think I was so harsh when I wrote mine.

[Thoth]

How things are said is often more important that what things are said.

[Thoth]

Turn 61 played...

Not much to report. General Martok was showing 92% odds on the attack vs the lizard. I decided not to attack with him. After hitting end turn, the lizard attacked. Martok survived at 0.3 health. Glad I didn't try those 92% odds.

Top GNP dropped to 67. That would suggest that the 81 GNP from the last couple of turns was someone (probably the Lanun without an Academy) doing God King boosted binary research.

I'm still on target for city 3 settled on turn 63.

[Thoth]

T62 TLDR version:

Finished settler. City will be founded t 63. Mr Yellow founded his third city. Lightsocket killed a skeleton. Eta on barrow pop t64.

C&D, diplo and screenies to follow in a while.

[Thoth]

Mail from Mr. Yellow:

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Eh, that marble site isn't very attracting, but fine. Me on the marble and you 1 north of the gold. However, i won't go into further settling agreements and consider the rest of that land neutral territory up for grabs.

I don't want to do a NAP for the moment. None of us has any interest in warfare right now and i consider it too early to talk about such things considering i've yet to get a clear view of the world, contacts included. Besides a NAP is there if you aren't really sure about your neighbour.[/COLOR]

Looks like the potential settling disputes have been solved for the moment. He doesn't sound very happy about it. I'm not too worried about a settler race for the rest of that territory. It's crap land except for the Fire mana and any city in the area will be founded on desert. Nomadic trait.

His response actually arrived Sunday evening. I'd spent a few hours setting up a sandbox and running some tests and setting up some micro plans. If he hadn't been willing to co-operate I could cause him some severe problems. I doubt I'd have the troops to take him out completely, but pillaging him back into the stone age and burning a city or two was definitely doable.

I'm glad I don't have to do that. Setting up for an axe war would have seriously warped my tech path away from economy techs and put me behind in settling the land to my south and west.

His unwillingness to commit to a NAP is bothersome but it does allow me to keep my options open. I'm going to be teching up to Bronze once AH is finished. Barb cities are going to start appearing in the fog on turn 70 which means I can expect to see stacks of 4 C1 barb warriors wandering about shortly thereafter. Bronze warriors + a few axes for barb defense are a good idea.

[Thoth]

In addition to running sims, I spent some time peering at graphs on Sunday to see what I could figure out about what Mr. Yellow has been up to.

Score Graph:

Crop Yield:

GNP:

Production:

Military:

The labels are WAGs as to what bounced his score.

It looks like he got his first tech on turn 8 (agriculture), and then started researching a tech with no pre-requisite. He got his second tech t15/16 (either Crafting or Ancient Chants. 3rd tech came around turn 20 (the score jumps a lot around t19-20 so it's hard to be sure. I think he grew, gained his land points and reseached/popped a tech). If he teched it manually then the tech was the other of Ancient Chants/Crafting. He may have popped a third tech, it's hard to tell at this point.

At this point, his GNP, Score, Food and Production flatlined for 15 turns or so. I think he built a settler at size 4 while teching Mysticism and Calendar. He revolted to GK/Agrarianism on turn 41. With no score increase from turn 21-35/36 he must have swapped between teching Calendar and Mysticism and then teched them both on successive turns (there is a large increase in his score around the turn 40-43 mark). Unless I'm misreading his tech path completely (which is very possible) this looks like a very weak opening. If he was depending on farms for his settler production then grabbing Calendar immediately after Agriculture (and swapping to Agrarianism immediately) followed by a beeline to God King or Mining (to get some mines up/forests chopped) while growing to size 6 would have gotten his second city down a couple of turns earlier.

He's obviously had some barb problems (he had a barb standing on a farm around turn 30). He's lost 3 warriors and a scout. He's built ~7 warriors and a scout. His current military rating is pretty much identical to mine (turn 61 I had 6 warriors he had 5 + a scout). Some of the rating comes from tech (the small jump in my military rating at turn 60 was Education finishing).

His current techs are:

Agriculture
Calendar
Crafting
Mining
Animal Husbandry
Ancient Chants
Mysticsm
Exploration

His last tech was on turn 60 and was either AH or Mining. Probably AH.


Land guesses:

Based on the food and GNP graphs he's got a riverside corn in his inner ring and a 2f/2c tile somewhere in his BFC.

2f 2C tiles: (all are riverside and grassland) Reagents, Wine, Cotton, Dyes, Gems.

Since this tile wasn't improved until after turn 40 (it would have shown in his GNP if he'd improved it) I going to go with Reagents.

Looking at the food numbers it looks like his capital is sitting at size 6 which means he's either deliberately holding his capital under it's happy cap or the resource doesn't provide happyness.

Since turn 40 his GNP has been increasing (not steadily, but that means he's either doing binary research or swapping tiles around or both ). Some of this can be accounted for by assuming he's got at least one elder council built. He doesn't have a monument in his second city yet (the slope of his culture graph is constant). So the additional GNP is coming from tiles, therefore his second city has at least one commerce tile.

Eyeballing the GNP graph suggests that Mr. Yellow is the 37 GNP person.

8 c from Palace
2 culture
3 c from trade routes (1 per city)
3 c from base tiles

= 16 commerce.

City/Civic maintenance will be costing ~7g per turn

= GNP of 9

28 commerce from tiles/elder councils/sages.

4 from riverside farms in the capital
4 from improved Reagents

=20 commerce from other sources

5 from an elder council/sage

~4-5 from riverside grass/floodplains

=10 commerce from specials

Possiblities:

Gold (8c improved, 9 if riverside)
Gems (6c improved, 7 riverside)
Cotton (3/4)
Dyes (5/6)
Wines (3/4)
Incence (6/7)

Looking at the production graph, I'm going to make a WAG that he has 2 elder councils and is running 1 Sage. The most likely resources based on the terrain that I can see are cotton, wines and/or incence. Two riverside cotton or two riverside Wines would fit the GNP numbers. Two cotton fit the GNP/Food/Production graph.

Metagame stuff:

From what I can make of his opening play I'm inclined to think Mr. Yellow is fairly new to FFH and from the things he's said in diplo correspondence about the land he's unfamiliar with the Erberus Continents map script. (tough land is normal for this map type)


Spoiled lurkers may now run over to the Lurker thread and laugh at all the things I got wrong.

[Sciz]

by the way if you want demographics from previous turns i've screenshotted every turn's demos, so ask if you want them

[Thoth]

Thanks for the offer Sciz.

I'm going to pass for now (I've spent too many hours peering at graphs over the last couple of days), but I may take you up on that later.

T63 has been played.

Golden Shack founded as planned.

Looks like someone has been feeding the animals. :hat:

(The scorpion is C1)

Demographics:

Interesting to note that Mr. Yellow's GNP has dropped to 35.
(note to self: there is a one turn lag in the Demographics screen)

Malakim finances:

A skeleton appeared on the desert tile 3 S of Golden Shack after I pressed enter. (not sure if I've already mentioned it, but the nice thing about being last in the turn order is that I get to watch the barbs move).

It will require a bit of careful movement but I can cover every tile around the barrow with a unit next turn and then pop it without worrying about nasty spawns. There is a scout, a Redshirt and General Martok on the barrow right now, Lightsocket is on the wheat plus the worker 1 tile East of the barrow gives me the 5 units needed.

"Oh mighty God of The RNG please smile upon us and grant us cool events, good lair pops and good luck in combat"

[Square Leg]

Hey Thoth,

Just to let you know that I am still here and ded lurking. Just been pretty busy these past few days.

The RNG has been either Wow! or Booo! so far this game so lets hope for Wow! Another trapped person...

[Thoth]

Hey Thoth,

Just to let you know that I am still here and ded lurking. Just been pretty busy these past few days.

The RNG has been either Wow! or Booo! so far this game so lets hope for Wow! Another trapped person...

No worries, life happens sometimes.


A GS would be major W00T!, but any positive result would be nice. Even just getting rid of the damn thing would be ok.

Nasty results are going to be minimized by covering every tile a unit can spawn on. Having access to the Pool of Tears means getting withered, diseased or poisoned are merely inconvenient.

Popping the barrow with a level 7 unit helps shift the odds in our favour (the level of the unit is added to the d100 roll). I'll find out once the save arrives.

I'm aiming to nail the Pyre soonish as well (assuming someone else hasn't already). Ideally around turn 71-72 but barb activities may well push that back. I'll have copper warriors online by turn 74/75 to deal with any hostiles.