[SPOILERS] ARRR Ye Scurvy Dogs! Hannah the Irin

[Mardoc]

The coves stay if your city is conquered, which is a good argument for letting you expand and grow your coves, then taking them away.

I guess the best thing for you would be if Thoth and Nyktorian go to war now. Any feel for the relationship between them? If Thoth is pulling back to give Nyktorian a free shot at the remaining Bannor cities, that's a bad sign.

Coves don't stay if he needs Tsunami's to take them, however. Or if I pillage them out of spite as I die. But I would prefer not to have to worry about that situation, so I'll be working on my power rating.

I've got no idea on the Thoth/Nyk relationship. I really need to get into contact with Nyktorion so that will change. About all I have is another reply from Sir Yellow

[COLOR="Cyan"]Nyktorions army is a typical elven one. Lots of archers, tigers and priests, lead by Gilven.
My final act will be to use cats and then get a few kills, the issue though is getting through the meat shield of tigers.
Anyway, i'm down to one city now, having lost the other one to the elves.
His reason to invade me were that he had no real oppurtunities to expand and requiring my cities to stay in the game. Find it a little weird cause he still had plenty of lands to expand south. Maybe that was simply oppurtunistic. Either way it showed he had no qualms of expoiting a neighbours situation, despite all his talkings about trust.

Regarding the use of cultists to crack my capital, well i fled it before he used his world spell, even spawned a cultist from it. I say there's more to it than it seems.
I fear Thoth will be running away with the game now, since he has aquirred my lands. I hoped that i could stall him long enough for others to come and support me in the war, preventing him from doing that. But when the elves showed their true actions, it all fell apart.[/COLOR]

That suggests to me that Nyktorion is feeling cramped and willing to war for land; unfortunately it doesn't answer the question of whether he's willing to take on Thoth or just weaker targets. My guess is that he'd be willing to countenance a combined attack on Thoth, splitting Thoth's lands, but only if I can hold up my end of the deal. If he's making justifications like 'needs to stay in the game', then clearly Thoth is going to be his primary focus, too, at least eventually.

[Mardoc]

He's engaging in wars and you're not.

Ah, of course. I'll correct that, eventually....:duel:

There's no way I'm in a winning position here - can't get prophets fast enough for the altar with only one religion and non-Philo, have only 1 mana node, and haven't been working on culture. So war is inevitable, at a minimum to take more mana nodes, or else just to go straight for domination/conquest.

[Mardoc]

Ok, it's not just the state of the game anymore that requires a war:

[COLOR="Yellow"]Hi Mardoc,

Thanks for the prompt Gold/Pearls deal.

As far as the lands east of my pig/incense city go: This area is quite close to my core cities and clearly lies within the Malakim's natural sphere of influence so I must respectfully decline your request for settling privileges in this area.

Recent scouting has shown that there is an area to your south east with lush lands and many bays and inlets for your coves, at the moment I'm not sure if it's an island or simply a continuation of the main continent but it looks like you could easily get 4 or more cities in this area.

The desert area to the east and south of Mindphasr isn't attractive to me at all. The land clearly lies within your natural sphere of influence and if I were foolish enough to build a city there it would be virtually impossible to defend in the unfortunate event of hostilities between our nations.

Once you get your second rice hooked up, would you be interested in a wheat for rice trade?[/COLOR]

You 'decline my request for settling privileges', huh? All the land in the world belongs to you, except that which you choose to dole out, huh? For future reference, Thoth - I was likely to declare war on you anyway, depending on the game situation (if Irgy turns out to be just a hop skip and jump across the ocean, then I might have gone after him instead), but this message is where I decided that you have to be taken down for my own emotional wellbeing. Your tone is insufferable, and I don't intend to suffer it forever.

The irony here is that I had already been leaning in the direction of ceding the Remnants area from a strategic standpoint, and if you'd just phrased it differently, you could perhaps have had a secure backlines while you attacked the rest of the world. I like my peaceful builder game too much! Something along the lines of 'well, that's really not fair, since you've got all that empty land to your east (the island)....'

I acknowledge that my military power is significantly less than Thoth's, and likely to remain that way for a while. And peaceful expansion really is easier, and should be pursued first. But now my gameplan has changed from growing as much as possible, then aiming for a victory, to finding the best way to take Thoth down a peg, then aiming for a victory.

That said, it'll be much more effective if I can get at least strategic surprise. So I'm debating how to respond. I'm inclined toward something like this:

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"]Glad to oblige. Now we can both produce Pearl stud earrings!

Well, if you insist, I suppose I can sacrifice the extra copper. And the Remnants. I'll admit, I only have a vague idea of the location of your core; it seemed unlikely that both the pearl/gold area and the east were in it simultaneously. My capital lies more to the east end of the peninsula; it was only Goblins and Giants who pushed me to settle west initially instead.

I have recently discovered the island to the east, and it did somewhat make me regret pushing for extra land on the continent as I discovered its scale. At the time I sent you the latest message, I anticipated only one city fitting on the island, at most. I appreciate the Right of Passage to my pearl city (I forget its name at the moment), as this allows me to recall the transport for ferry duty to help take the island from its current barbarous inhabitants.

I could definitely get on board for a wheat/rice trade.[/COLOR]

[DaveV]

You're in no position to fight Thoth right now, and things will probably only get worse as time goes by, since he has a great GNP and good expansion space. He has mobility Cultists that can crush your cities, so you need something fast to oppose them, along with a reliable source of collateral damage (I doubt he's going to leave his units standing around on coastline waiting for Tsunami/Raging Seas). I think you need an ally (or allies) to manage the ground war; your civ is naturally suited more to economic warfare and harassment. For now, it's best to play along and remember the saying, "Revenge is a dish best served cold."

The key thing is to stay in contact with the other civs and make sure Thoth doesn't turn into a runaway. Don't let him use divide and conquer tactics, unlike a certain other FFH PBEM game...

[Mardoc]

Yeah, I know. Part of why Thoth's tone rankles is that at least for the moment, it's true that he can boss me around.

I think, as of last turn, I may be essentially even with him in GNP terms - he's got a lot more culture production than I do, which has to be inflating his numbers. I also expect to be growing my GNP faster than he is, as I finish settling and my coves/cities mature. I can turn any little piece of land into a viable commerce city, while he's bound to run out of floodplains eventually.

The plan for the moment is to keep playing nice and aim to outgrow him both in cities and in military might, get an ally or two, and see what opportunities develop.

I have the fast units planned, so maybe it's time to think about my collateral. One possibility is Maelstrom; it's not huge amounts of damage, but it's available early. Another is catapults, but those really only work where there's roads or I'm willing to wait around for a while. I suppose the other alternative is to go ahead and switch to Ashen Veil.

[Mardoc]

For all that sound and fury, this turn, not a lot happened. Masonry came in, so I'll be hooking up the Marble promptly. I take another cash saving break, then it'll be on to the Trade path. I discovered something embarrassing not to have known - lighthouses give an extra trade route! A lot of my cities will therefore need both lighthouses and Sea Havens, fit in around the military prepwork.

Settler moves into place to found next turn, and Captain Crunch returns to settler production. Thoth has a Cultist hanging around the eastern border, probably just scouting. There's a chance he's going to the island to steal my hut, and a chance that he's coming to see my lands and see if I was lying about the island.

[Mardoc]

T109 starts off with a sign of hope:

Very little effect to me, -2 AC, but I'm sure both Irgy and WarriorKnight are going to be annoyed by me getting this one, for different reasons

I finished exploring around Brigit; no dice . Looks like my eastern island and the last 2 mainland sites are all I'll get peacefully. It still should put me as one of the top two civs, though, so long as I can keep Malakim from invading.

Samy (the sugar city) was founded this turn, and the worker in the area immediately begins a deforestation program. The first Cultist rolls off the production lines, as well, and I get an unpleasant shock - that alone brings me to #3 in Power. I'm still less than half of Thoth's power, but apparently he and Nyktorion are the only ones with anything resembling an army. My power rating will be very bouncy for a while as I build and disband Cultists, but at least it'll give Thoth something to watch.

MafiaBoy is getting to nearly be a core city, with 7 population and the basic buildings in place. I think it'll pump warriors for a while, but then maybe spit out a worker or two. Once I have the tech, this could be an excellent place to assemble chariots in - floodplains and hills .

I'm starting to consider a civics switch - I think Aristograrianism may have been a mistake, as I have 5 total farms in the empire, and don't expect to gain many more. Meanwhile, maintenance is starting to really bite; even with Aristocracy I'm at 28 gold/turn in city maintenance costs, and I have no intention of slowing my growth. Something like City States/Religion/Military State/Conquest could be a good place to go in 10-20 turns, as I ramp up military production to something serious; that'd require me to get Warfare, of course, but it's a relatively cheap tech; I ought to be able to go all the way to Trade/Construction then Warfare within 15 turns. (adding up the tech screen times is 11 turns, but I've got to add some for gold generation and subtract some for prereq bonuses and empire growth).

That would, on net, cost me 15 gold from the farms, save me a considerable amount from maintenance, add +25% war weariness, +2 happiness in all OO cities (which should be most to all by then), give me +15% military production, let me use food to build military units and let me cash rush. I think it's a switch that would be worth it from just an econ standpoint, let alone to allow me to build army fast.

[DaveV]

I don't worry about overall city maintenance costs, but more about each city's costs versus income. Courthouses are always an option for cities with really high costs. Costs will rise throughout the game, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it, other than not expand and build no troops.

If you don't plan on a lot of farms, aristograrianism probably doesn't make sense. Conquest is a two-edged sword - it can completely halt the growth of your cities when you're in a war footing. It also makes it hard to recover from Blight. In my experience, changing more than two civics at once leads to 2-turn anarchy.

[Mardoc]

I don't worry about overall city maintenance costs, but more about each city's costs versus income. Courthouses are always an option for cities with really high costs. Costs will rise throughout the game, and there's not a whole lot you can do about it, other than not expand and build no troops.

Well, this is true, and it'll take something ridiculous before a cove + city tile + trade routes is not profitable. I was using it more to make the point that city states might actually leave me with more of a profit than Aristocracy, that's all.

If you don't plan on a lot of farms, aristograrianism probably doesn't make sense. Conquest is a two-edged sword - it can completely halt the growth of your cities when you're in a war footing. It also makes it hard to recover from Blight. In my experience, changing more than two civics at once leads to 2-turn anarchy.

Part of why I'm considering it is that I'm thinking pretty short term; this is where I wish I was Spiritual, so that I could go Conquest during the prep for NAP-end, then switch away later. But the fact is, I need a force capable of either handling or scaring away 10 Cultists + unknown # of swords + whatever he builds in the meantime, and I'm starting to get nervous about whether I'll be able to pull it off.

That said, 2 turns of anarchy is a pretty steep price, also in the short term. I'll have to mull this over some more; maybe it still makes sense to stick with what I've got for now. Just because it was a mistake to come here doesn't mean it wouldn't also be a mistake to leave. With a total empire wide hammer production (current) of about 80 hammers, that's 2 chariots I'd be throwing away in order to have the chance of producing them faster. And I can still turn food into production via mines; in fact most of my cities have more mines than any other improvement for that exact reason. Pretty much the only cities it would affect are Captain Crunch and a couple of the newer ones, post Lighthouse; maybe it's not worth sacrificing two turns of production out of Phiber Optik, Phoenix, and MafiaBoy just to gain some production out of Captain Crunch.

The more I think about it, the more I think Spiritual is in fact a top tier trait in FFH. Because the religious units can be so powerful, and the civics are both powerful and situational, it can really pay off.

[DaveV]

The more I think about it, the more I think Spiritual is in fact a top tier trait in FFH. Because the religious units can be so powerful, and the civics are both powerful and situational, it can really pay off.

Agreed. Switching between religions at will can be awfully handy (OO culture vs. RoK cash vs. AV science vs. FoL ancient forest growth). Some of the religious buildings are pretty strong, too (Tower of Complacency, Mines of Gal'Dur, Basilica).