Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Well, since we missed the turn today, I'm going to do a bit of a rambling post. I think we need to make some decisions on where we're headed as a Civ, a macro plan if you will. I think ultimately we have 3 options. So let's call this the first in a new series...



[SIZE="5"]Dude, Where's My Future?[/SIZE]

As I see it, we have several distinct options of where to go as a Civilization. Ultimately, I'm not sure which one is best, but I think making a choice here is important because it will inform our future tech and settling choices, and you're far more likely to be successful if you're aiming towards something specific. Let's take a look at the and/or gates our fledgling Civilization is going to have to pass through. In each situation, I have the problem facing our Civ and 3 possible solutions:

The Nicolae Decision.

1. Plan for a T100 attack with the intent of taking all his land.
   
2. Plan for a T100 defense, with the intent of a counter-attack and taking all of his land a later time.
   
3. Attempt to garner a NAP-extension, worry about Nicolae later.
   

The Clown Decision.

1. Plan for an alpha strike at the first possible opportunity, likely using OO units and/or some sort of RoP from the Hippus.
   
2. Play the long game, knowing we're furthest from them, and try and deny them the tools they need to accentuate their likely puppet spamming gameplan.
   
3. Ignore them, worry about them when the time comes.
   

The Hippus Situation.

1. Do our best to maintain positive relations, attempt to develop as a trading partner and buffer vs. Clowns, rely on the worldspell if relations falter.
   
2. Cautiously try to keep them at bay, start preparing an anti-Horsey defense.
   
3. Plan an audacious attack.
   

Victory.

1. Play a long game, develop well, attempt to take over the world.
   
2. Play a long game, develop well, attempt to build the Tower of Mastery, hoping we can find the extra 3 nodes we need in Nicolae's lands.
   
3. Play a long game, pray to the RNG and build the Altar.
   

I'd like to gather thoughts from the team before getting too deep into plans, but I will say I think the 3rd option is pretty much a no go in each situation either because we can't pull it off or it is doomed to fail even if we do. Obviously, the how is a big part of each of these issues. We've gone into some depth on the how's regarding the Sheaim, though we still haven't really crunched the numbers to see what we really will have at D-Day. We haven't discussed the others heavily at all, which is what I'm hoping we can accomplish here. I think the Balseraph situation has some potential for minor success in each plan, but I also think the probability of failure is much higher. I do think if we can come up with a way to deny them Gibbon that would be pretty huge - puppet spam is obnoxious even on adepts, let alone mages, but no Archmage until very late certainly makes their army a lot less imposing. Its an interesting question, since we want no part of CoE long term, and if we swap out after building Gibbon, he could just be built somewhere else anyway. I wonder if we could land CoE, build Gibbon, and then get him killed? I suppose its possible they're not even planning on landing Gibbon, but if that's the case, then they're smoking crack. He's an unbelievably strong hero in Balseraph hands.

As far as the Hippus are concerned, well, I think we have too many enemies already. I think we have to do whatever we can to cultivate that relationship and if it fails, rely on Ents to slow down the invading horsies. And as far as a victory condition, well, I suppose domination is the most likely possibility, which shows you how much I really think we can win.

Anyway, lets get some chatter here, and that will hopefully lead to the specifics on each plan.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Great post, Gaspar! However, I'm afraid I won't have time today to give it the response it deserves.

I will quickly say that we probably need an alliance with one of the three teams you've highlighted. I also know who my money's on as the most likely option.

Hope the turn catches up again later.

[NobleHelium]

Well, it's pretty obvious that we want to ally with the Hippus. And you can forget about the Altar victory, it's not so much the Prophets as the tech involved. The Tower is always easier unless you cannot get the mana for whatever reason despite being able to get the tech (you must be in some sort of mana desert on the map if that's the case).

And yeah, trying to get CoE is a good idea regardless, for the shrine if nothing else. But it's too early to consider that, have to look at relative tech rates once we've actually gotten our economy going. You can just delete Gibbon after building him, don't even have to suicide or whatever. But you might as well use him for a while if he's built, unless you're afraid he's going to get dominated or something.

[Mardoc]

Yikes, one visitor for one weekend, and I'm already way behind the class! .

I'll try to catch up this week. The only comment I have at the moment is that I'm very glad to see the speed our cottage economy is starting up - 3 cottages and one already improved is very nice to see - almost caught up to a straight aristocracy economy, and soon our hammer advantage will start to tell.

[Gaspar]

Turn 57...

...these barbs are really annoying.

Score increases: Grigori (28), Hippus (11), Sheaim (22). I'm guessing that's BW for Nicolae, as he doesn't have a 2nd city down yet, so that can only be a classical tech.

So a barb is coming up from the southern city. Couldn't have gone after Nicolae, could you have, stupid barbs? I don't even have a unit I'm especially interested in picking up XP on yet. Nevertheless, I don't anticipate having any trouble with him, but he will make us relocate the workers next turn.



Hunting is 2T away yet. The Chronic expanded at EOT, confirming that the Barb city is indeed on the hill between deer, fish and corn.

[Man Behind the Mask]

...these barbs are really annoying.

Good job we’re getting Hunting soon, as Tigers, Bears, Spiders and Griffons all seem to find this part of the world more hospitable than us and the Sheaim.

So a barb is coming up from the southern city. Couldn't have gone after Nicolae, could you have, stupid barbs? I don't even have a unit I'm especially interested in picking up XP on yet. Nevertheless, I don't anticipate having any trouble with him, but he will make us relocate the workers next turn.

Well the 1-2-3 Kid could be on his way to Unlocking Form of the Titan. I’ve seen in a few places that the barbs pick on players with a higher score, so that may have influenced that warrior’s decision.

Catching up on the Score & Demo analysis:

• The chances of anybody else winning this game are getting increasingly small. I think the game leaders settled TWO new cities a couple of turns ago, putting them on 19 pop (plus the 5 city tiles).
  
• Most recent Grigori score increase is a puzzler, as none of the population stats have changed between turns – it looks like classical tech (22) plus one pop (6, although the next in the sequence should actually be 5). There were no land area changes anywhere between Turns 35 and 40, so they shouldn’t be getting any points for that. Maybe this is the point where the C&D machine starts to break down.
  
• There is one easy way and (I think) one tricky way to test whether the Sheaim did pick up Bronzeworking. The easy one is if they also got a 2k power increase which shows up in the graphs next turn. For the tricky way, I can’t remember where I read it to check if my recall/understanding are right, but I think this is the gist. BW is the same beaker cost as a couple of other techs (e.g. construction and the early religions). If hovering over it shows fewer turns/beakers for BW than construction, then I think that is factoring in a “known tech bonus”. Will need to investigate in-game, as. The time-gap definitely looks about right, though, and I don’t think they even need a Training Yard to get the zombie production line flowing.
  

I’ll hopefully have time later for some further thoughts.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Time for some more rambling.



Thanks, Gaspar, for setting out your thoughts so clearly with a nice structure. In contrast, this is a bit messy. I’ll also start with the usual caveat about my lack of experience playing and with diplo in multiplayer games. I think my views tend to be a little idealistic, when maybe paranoid is a better state of mind.

I think your summary at the end shows that, although there are options available, there is a clear path which seems more prosperous than the others. I’m going to get on your case a bit here, because I think there really needs to be more diplo flowing if you aren’t going to narrow down the options even further. You know that others are trying to make their voice heard. In this respect, I don’t think the uberfish victory in PBEM2 (as deserved and well-played as it was) has done us any favours. There should be some stuff in my C&D guesswork to use as hooks, e.g. you can ask either of our contacts if the Balseraphs really do have 5 cities?

So, to do my share of the work, I’ll try to provide some thoughts for use in promoting what I think is probably our best hope at this point in the game.

The Hippus Alliance

As you’ve suggested, I’ve hinted, and NobleHelium has stated outright (his one line is probably as valuable as all this text ), we’ve got to do all we can to cultivate the Hippus as our friend. This option isn’t without downsides (covered later), but seems much stronger than our other choices. I’ll try to break out the main points.

Position in the Game

The Hippus are doing quite well. Their expansion is second quickest, they’ve already got Agristocracy up and running, and the graphs make it look like they’ve got reasonable land (aside from also having a chronic shortage of happiness).

We, however, look like we’re a little behind the curve and have a few barbarian issues to deal with. We’ve still got expansion room, the land on our peninsular looks universally green, and we have a civ that is just starting to get going with its strengths. We have a presentational challenge to make ourselves look like an attractive junior partner, but not one who is so weak that the Hippus should just stomp us.

Military Strength

The Hippus have a lightning fast military with a world spell designed for quick conquest. We’re planning to have a mobile force which could usefully support the horsies on the charge. As it happens, the turn-order works in our favour here, since RG and Gaspar move sequentially.

Although their army specialises in a quick strike, we have a wordspell designed to prevent exactly that (although I wouldn’t be surprised to see RG’s thread title become truly prophetic if we ever used MotT ). Since our land is on the other side of the “sea” and mountains, it really doesn’t fit easily with the Hippus core. If RG finds out about our barren resource situation, it is even less appealing. Of course the same applies in the opposite direction. So, despite us being neighbours, fighting it out really isn’t a great option.

Empire Building

Financial Hippus should be pretty strong at teching throughout the game, but the path to Warhorses is an expensive one. With their Hero and Ride of the Nine Kings at the same tech, this is certainly their target. That means they might appreciate some help with things like religion spreads. If I understand the mechanics right, we can build Temples in their cities and even settle Tigers in their carnivals (no piece of FFH analysis would be complete without some need for future worldbuilder checking ).

By having a “Big Brother” partner in military affairs, we would be free to work harder on our economy and develop towards an alternate victory condition. We could certainly appreciate some payment for any support services we provide to the citizens of Camelot.

Esus Denial

I actually think the best way of preventing the Clowns from taking Gibbon would be to convince the Hippus that they want the religion. Shadowriders at Warhorses allows them to double their civ-boosted allocation of Tier 4 units, and we discussed a long time ago the need for some kind of powerful magical collateral to help out the mounted hordes. Even Horseback Riding is fairly close to Deception.

Fun Factor

It seems from a lot of games, and I hope it even comes across in this thread, that there is a lot more fun to be had in playing with people, rather than against them. RG has come across as a creative and funny guy in his diplo, but it also shows he’s willing to put the effort in. I believe he and Gaspar are on the same timezone, so there is every chance that a closer relationship could be effective and fruitful.

If we’re destined not to win this thing, which is still a long way from a certainty in my mind, then we should do our best to squeeze out some enjoyment along the way.

The Downsides

We’re basically trapped on our peninsular, because we believe the Hippus block our only way out to the west. That means that we probably need to take the Sheaim lands to ensure we have a big enough base to compete in the late game. Even if we launch a successful offensive against the Clowns, it’s going to be much easier for the Hippus to take and keep land than it would be for us.

The Esus denial plan has the significant weakness of potentially landing us with a Nox Noctis enhanced neighbour. I’d actually say that is better than an archmage enhanced Keelyn somewhere else in the world.

Hippus alliance secures one flank but does very little to help us out if Nicolae decides to attack. If we’re not going to be able to decisively win that war, we’re out of the running anyway. I suppose the one saving grace is that we might be able to get Nicloae on our side in an alliance against the Clowns if we already have one friend. However, I’m not sure we could even mention this, for fear of it being leaked back to <redacted>. The disaster scenario is that the Balseraphs are acting as a go-between with messages between the Sheaim and Hippus, who are already plotting our Turn 101 downfall.

Although this potentially keeps us alive a bit longer, and gives us a much better chance of taking down the current leader in the game, we do still need to find an answer to the “Victory” portion of the problem.

**

TLDR: Hippus = Good. Gaspar get chatty!

[Mygdala]

Lurker piping in to say that I'm really enjoying the thread, especially all the detailed analysis you guys do. I also want to remind you not to get discouraged by ugly-looking demos--the elves are supposed to start slow. Other civs' snowballs start sooner, but the elves' still ends up bigger.

[Mardoc]

Anything that contributes to the conversation contributes to my understanding. I can't speak for everyone else, but I'd think that the rest of the team, non-Mardoc division gains from the same.

This is exaggerated . I'm still learning, too. I may play the expert, but I still have lots of learning to do.

Is this broken?

I think you've done a good job of laying out the various possibilities (and no, it's probably not broken, just powerful). I really like the idea of assembling a stable of various Priests, and perhaps the Divine footsoldiers as well, in spots. OO, AV, FoL - these will all be excellent priests to have. Stygians in particular have interesting tactical possibilites against non-waterwalking foes, on a map with lots of ocean (and this one seems to qualify).

The chance to gain Potency mages by way of Savant is also extremely tempting. If I remember correctly, one of the AV priest units also has Sundered, which gives a bonus to summons based on the AC - but that might be the Ritualist, not the Savant.

The only caveat I have is that, well, we're the elves. We'll have a hammer on every tile, the Remnants, the choice to have mined forests, large cities...and meanwhile we are still behind a vanilla aristocracy economy, let alone a Financial one. Trading gold for hammers isn't something we want to be doing, most of the time. Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part we ought to be building our military, not buying it. And, perhaps once (if?) we make it to late game, our financial position will have improved enough to change my mind on this subject. Cottages do eventually catch and surpass Aristocracy, after all, and we will have oodles of them.

Dude, Where's My Future?

The Nicolae Decision.

1. Plan for a T100 attack with the intent of taking all his land.
   
2. Plan for a T100 defense, with the intent of a counter-attack and taking all of his land a later time.
   
3. Attempt to garner a NAP-extension, worry about Nicolae later.
   

I think the possibilities here depend on the details, and on Nicolae. I don't like 2), the way you've phrased it. We might prefer, tactically, to fight a defense, but we should plan to turn it into a war of conquest as soon as possible. If we're going to fight, we should aim to profit. And if he's willing to attack us once, he'll do it again, unless we defang him or remove him from the game.

I do look forward to getting some real scouting done ASAP, to help judge the Treant attack once and for all . And of course that'll give some indication on the success or lack thereof of your diplo efforts - if he's stockpiling PZ's in the north, well, that's what we call a 'hint'.

Here's the only case where I think option 3 is possibly good for us. I'm not in a position to judge whether it's possible, but there's a chance we have access to enough land to be able to grow nicely vertically. Especially as the Elves, there's a huge difference between the cities we have now and what they can be post-Bloom, post lots of happiness sources, etc.

The Clown Decision.

1. Plan for an alpha strike at the first possible opportunity, likely using OO units and/or some sort of RoP from the Hippus.
   
2. Play the long game, knowing we're furthest from them, and try and deny them the tools they need to accentuate their likely puppet spamming gameplan.
   
3. Ignore them, worry about them when the time comes.
   

I agree, 3 isn't a good choice. At the least, we want to make sure we have tools available to counter them - Destroy Undead, say, and a lot of Tigers. Maybe some Assassins in the event of Gibbon, Hemah, etc. Hey, look - I've described most of our gameplan anyway! Frankly, summon spam has that glaring weakness of being tempted in the direction of the undead, since that way even adepts can play. There are others, of course, which might be a pain to fight, but I would expect the bulk of his forces to be undead. And we're definitely not near enough that harrassment can go either way without approval of the in between neighbors.

Conversely, combine a good source of collateral and enough quick movers, and we can still chew through any stack.

Also - Destroy Undead, Tsunami, and Tiger spam are force multipliers - if we're going to apply them, the best way is in collaboration with someone closer.

This will be totally dependent on diplo with Rawwking and Nicolae. Unless you can tie them down diplomatically, we can't afford to waste effort attacking the Clowns before we're ready.

The Hippus Situation.

1. Do our best to maintain positive relations, attempt to develop as a trading partner and buffer vs. Clowns, rely on the worldspell if relations falter.
   
2. Cautiously try to keep them at bay, start preparing an anti-Horsey defense.
   
3. Plan an audacious attack.
   

I think this one is obvious. 1 is preferred, 2 might be necessary, 3 is silly. We might fight eventually, but here we should defer that day as long as possible. For offense, we have Nicolae, barbs, and <redacted> all as earlier targets.

Victory.

1. Play a long game, develop well, attempt to take over the world.
   
2. Play a long game, develop well, attempt to build the Tower of Mastery, hoping we can find the extra 3 nodes we need in Nicolae's lands.
   
3. Play a long game, pray to the RNG and build the Altar.
   

For the most part, I favor 2, as that allows us to build long-term alliances. The nice thing here is that whatever else, we're in it for the long haul, so we can take our opportunities as we find them.

Gaspar get chatty!

I definitely agree with this. As long as we're giving you assignments, I've got one more - make an index post to our various 'episodic' posts, so that we can find them for reference later on. Preferably by editting something on page 1 .

[NobleHelium]

The chance to gain Potency mages by way of Savant is also extremely tempting. If I remember correctly, one of the AV priest units also has Sundered, which gives a bonus to summons based on the AC - but that might be the Ritualist, not the Savant.

Ritualists get Unholy Taint, which basically changes one regular strength to one unholy strength, and makes them gain experience faster (and raises the experience cap). If you could upgrade them to archmages (or mages I guess, but that would be a sidegrade) that would be nice, but you can't. So it doesn't do too much other than make them gain promotions a bit faster. Although you could upgrade ritualists to druids and keep the experience bonus I guess. Sundered is a promotion that Sheaim units get (after researching Corruption of Spirit IIRC) and demons can promote to. I don't think you can get it otherwise.