Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Turn first, diplo thoughts later...

First thing to do, check the log, see if Paradise City is still standing...





I swapped the hawk to The Chronic and took a picture of the south, not discovering much.



Other than that, a return to normal domestic matters. I sent the Disciple of Leaves towards The Chronic, while the worker pair is throwing up another cottage there in anticipation of the soon to be improved happy cap. The other worker pair continued constructing the trans-Ljosalfar highway. And the the savant...



The Chronic is now the AV holy city. That should confuse some C&D.

Research is full bore on Crafting. A couple more cottage growths and at EOT, we're up to 61 bpt, -8 gpt @100%. We'll get a GPT back after the disciple spreads the Fellowship at the capital.

[NobleHelium]

Nice. Some good luck for a change. Not sure why spreading FoL to the capital gives 1 gpt though, we don't have a shrine yet?

That hawk flight isn't so useless. That tile 1E of the mana node is a pretty good city location down the line. Obviously it gets the mana node and catches the rice. It's chest deep in jungle so it'd take a lot of effort to get it off the ground, but it's nestled in a very nice location guarding the mountain pass and fits very nicely with existing planned city sites.

[Gaspar]

Nice. Some good luck for a change. Not sure why spreading FoL to the capital gives 1 gpt though, we don't have a shrine yet?

Saves us the unit maintenance on the disciple.

That hawk flight isn't so useless. That tile 1E of the mana node is a pretty good city location down the line. Obviously it gets the mana node and catches the rice. It's chest deep in jungle so it'd take a lot of effort to get it off the ground, but it's nestled in a very nice location guarding the mountain pass and fits very nicely with existing planned city sites.

Yeah, thought the same thing, quite defensible as well, with only one entry point. I dunno, I think a lot of my "let's get BW" zeal that nobody but me thinks is a good idea is that there's so much damned jungle around and sending a Ritualist in to RoF stuff is just unreliable.

[Mardoc]

Only have one comment this time (and a question). Why do you want to put the Disciple in The Chronic? Surely we'd rather the guaranteed shot of getting Leaves into a production heavy city - Hash Pipe?

And...I forgot to look at the screenies when I was at home, or I could answer this myself, but - any Ancient forests yet?

[Gaspar]

Only have one comment this time (and a question). Why do you want to put the Disciple in The Chronic? Surely we'd rather the guaranteed shot of getting Leaves into a production heavy city - Hash Pipe?

And...I forgot to look at the screenies when I was at home, or I could answer this myself, but - any Ancient forests yet?

Because The Chronic needs the improved happy cap right now, and Hash Pipe doesn't? I could be otherwise convinced of course, but that's the way I looked at it.

And 2 Ancient Forests - 1 on the tile 1S of Paradise City where we're currently building a cottage and 1 WNW of the capital city center.

[Mardoc]

Because The Chronic needs the improved happy cap right now, and Hash Pipe doesn't? I could be otherwise convinced of course, but that's the way I looked at it.

Oh, right, religions are useful for something other than war. That probably does outweigh the minor chance of a failed spread. Carry on...

Don't forget to revolt to Religion, then, to make use of it.

[Gaspar]

Quite quiet today. No turn either.

I think I'd want to hold off on revolting to religion until we get at least one Hunter out, to take advantage of the Nationhood bonus, but then yeah, we'll probably swap to Religion and stay there for some time.

Since there's not a lot going on, figured I'd try and draft an email to Nicolae.

Hey Nicolae,

I'll avoid the politics but thanks on the congratulations. I knew it when I signed up but its a bit frustrating watching how slow the elves are out of the gate. Things like WotF are essential for a lot of reasons when you play a Spiritual Ljosalfar, but its pretty painful watching Fin Hippus and Floodplains Clowns with the rub of the green storm out of the gate.

Can't say I'm thrilled with you settling on Hash Pipe's borders, but we're pretty close so there's no avoiding some of that. I expect I might make one "southernly" settlement before all is said and done, but its low priority now, so if we can at least give each other heads up when we're settling in each others direction, hopefully we can maintain a fair relationship about it. No need to worry about me building monuments, there are about a billion higher priorities. Obviously I'll plant a temple there for all the benefits that gives, but I don't forsee any other cultural buildings going in there anytime soon.

Anyway, about the clowns. I really believe the best time to hit them is now - each step they get closer to mages they get further out of sight. Hell, not sure how closely you've followed FFHV, but Bob put up a hell of a defense against a dogpile involving archmages with just adepts. Puppet spam is that broken. Obviously, with 6-ish cities between us, its going to be tough for us to generate the sort of production required to knock Kyan back to the pack, but like I said in my last email, I think we're at best playing for 3rd place right now - Balseraphs and Hippus are that far in front. So if we don't try, we're just sitting idly by watching like we were the Parkin Violators.

I think if we combined a force of PZ's and Hunters, we could make a dent. Kyan's had lizards since T8 or whatever, so Hunters will be very useful against what is sure to be a fairly decent sized animal army. Obviously I also can provide hawk support which will be helpful in determining what we can hit. I'm more than willing to fire up the war machine greater than that, but the problem we face is that its a long road for me to get there, so you'll obviously have to do more of the heavy lifting, especially as neither one of us has Cartography as last I checked, so we can't even OB so that I could take advantage of any roads you may have built/jungle you may have cleared.

If we're successful, you would certainly get any cities you wanted to keep, I couldn't possibly support any cities that far away this early. I'd be happy to let you have the overwhelming majority of any conquest gold as well, since as I said, logistically you'd have to do more of the heavy lifting than I can. Mostly all I'd ask from you in return is similar support down the road in an action against the Hippus, who would definitely be the new leader if we were successful against Kyan.

The other option, which is more dangerous, is to wait a bit. If we agreed to a more medium-term alliance against our western neighbors, I could tech Message from the Deep and get some Cultists in play, which would obviously have a much shorter road to hoe to get to Kyan, by using the inland sea. Rawkking founded the religion, but as Spiritual, the free Mobility promo would be a huge help in getting over there. I could possibly shove some warriors in the bathtub to get a melee strike force to support your PZ's as well. The problem here is you're talking at least 20T before I could tech everything I needed and start churning out enough Cultists to make a dent. I also don't know how many coastal cities Kyan has, as I've yet to see his territory.

I'm sure there are other options, but those are the two I perceive as most feasible. I guess what I really want to get at is that I think its really stupid for the two of us to fight. It would more than likely be a bloody stalemate, and our more advanced western neighbors would just take us out when all was said and done. I've been preparing as though you were going to attack me the minute our NAP expired all game, and I'm sure I'll be able to field a credible defense, but I just think its nonsense for us to piss away our games like that this early, when its obvious we need to focus on cutting down the "tall poppy" before he's got Gibbon and God only knows what else.

Let me know what you guys think down there and maybe we can get together and hash out the details, but we do need to act quickly, as what we decide here will inform things like tech choices and builds for both of us, so the longer we sit on this, the less feasible an option it becomes.

Regards,
Gaspar

There's a stab in the dark. I'd certainly like feedback from y'all before I go any further with it, since there's a lot of info in there. But I believe most of that. I do think we can handle him unless he comes in huge numbers, and the worldspell would probably be able to be used offensively, given our close proximity. But I just think if nothing is done about the Clowns, we're already looking at endgame. And we need to see whether we need to focus on a PZ defense and counterattack force, or figuring a way to get some stuff over the inland sea.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Some more quick thoughts. Sorry about lack of quotes to organise things.

Very glad to see we averted disaster, and surprised that we suffered no losses at all.

On the tech plan: I feel much more inclined to Gaspar's BW/Archery beeline than everyone else seems to be - I've never been sure that only 4 or 5 priests would be enough. If we don't go to war, then it will maybe have been an error, as throwing some Priests at Hash Pipe will make it amazing. I do think Gilden as another major deterrent, mines, and the ability to turn out better one turn troops to ensure we're never outnumbered are all positives.

Map info is positive - if I was RG I'd be racing for the wheat/pigs city on my side of the chokepoint.

On spreading FoL and civics, don't you get a Happy face just for the state religion? Therefore swapping to religion civic makes it two.

On Nicolae, one thing I might add to the diplo is about the barb city. If he keeps it, we'll have no choice but to settle something third ring and take all his tiles. Otherwise that city for us is nothing but mountains and overlap. Do you want to mention getting RG in on alliance, or would that just be swapping to a new threat in the event the Clowns are beaten?

[Mardoc]

On the tech plan: I feel much more inclined to Gaspar's BW/Archery beeline than everyone else seems to be - I've never been sure that only 4 or 5 priests would be enough. If we don't go to war, then it will maybe have been an error, as throwing some Priests at Hash Pipe will make it amazing. I do think Gilden as another major deterrent, mines, and the ability to turn out better one turn troops to ensure we're never outnumbered are all positives.

It's different in my mind if the threat is Hippus than if it's PZ. Against Hippus, we really do want to turtle up in cities, and Bronze Warriors are the best choice for that. PZ - we'd have to fight a more drawn out, mobile engagement, which warriors aren't suited for.

I do also acknowledge the advantage of flexibility - if RG decides not to come until T120 or early at T90, then BW first makes sense.

On spreading FoL and civics, don't you get a Happy face just for the state religion? Therefore swapping to religion civic makes it two.

Yes - although it'll probably take a few turns for Chronic to grow and then refill its food box, so it can wait until it's about to 'avoid growth' again.

On Nicolae, one thing I might add to the diplo is about the barb city. If he keeps it, we'll have no choice but to settle something third ring and take all his tiles. Otherwise that city for us is nothing but mountains and overlap. Do you want to mention getting RG in on alliance, or would that just be swapping to a new threat in the event the Clowns are beaten?

I think I agree we should discuss the city too, yet I also have a contradictory thought - that's quite the wall of text already. Maybe what we need to do is break it up into separate e-mails - one on settling/barb city locations, one on vsKyan plotting, etc.

On RG - well, the primary thing we'll gain by asking Nicolae's help vs him is credibility. I think it's quite clear that we have to attack someone for expansion room. It'll probably be clear to Nicolae as well. It's true that having him onboard would help vs Kyan, but that would still leave Nicolae in a bad spot later. Plus, well, I don't think we could get Hippus support anyway.

[Gaspar]

T78.

Big turn news, we have a trade connection to Nicolae, as he's settled on our borders. Here's his resource situation:



Rawkking and Kyan have both settled additional cities, up to 5 and 6 respectively. Sad.

I flew this turn's hawk north to get a look at the barb city. Looks like we'll see another kill team shortly.



No additional ancient forests this turn. Settler completes in The Chronic this turn. Provided that the Disciple successfully spreads Leaves next turn, we'll start on a Temple in the capital while it grows. Hash Pipe grows to max pre-religion happy next turn, and will start working the Remnants. After the Hunter, we'll debate building the next Settler for the blocking site or another Hunter/Hawk pair first. The Lizard is back to bother Hash Pipe, here's that situation:



Crafting is in at EOT. Onto Mining afterwards, which should take 2T with overflow. Anything else anyone might like to know?