[SPOILERS] Balseraphs: A Guide to Mis-Management (by Kyan and TT)

[darrelljs]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads....e&id=12448

Darrell

[Krill]

Why you post that Darrell?

[darrelljs]

I can't stand the default FFH terrain. Others might feel the same way, I find the blue marble terrain much better.

Darrell

[Thoth]

Good news! You don't need to actually be in the Veil in order to build savants! You just need a temple



You might want the Veil anyway for a little while just to get the grimoire. .

And Ritualists. Rof has a 40% damage cap. Better than Fireballs or Maelstrom.

After talking with Bob, I've put together a possible second plan depending on GP generation. If the RNG hates us and we pop multiple Prophets, then we can use one to make Nox Noctis, but another can be used to make the first level of the Alter of the Luonnotar. For that we would need to revolt to Empy, RoK or Order, and we could do that as we revolt out of CoE to make Gibbon desert prior to the rebuild Gibbon as a summoner beast. We would then build the AoL where ever, and when we revolt back to CoE we'll have +2XP to disciple units.

What's the point in all this, though? Thanks to reading PBEMIII, Thoth pointed out that Savants upgrade to Mages (something I didn't know...) and with the AoL we could build 10XP savants (4XP from civics, 2 from FotT, 2 form CP, 2 from AoL). If we managed to push out a second GP we wouldn't actually need the CP for 10XP, though. That said, there is a downside to Savants - they would have 1 less promotion due to the lack of a free promo, and we would be giving up the option of building them and gaining free level 1 spells. That said, they'd still be good units to have to bulk out our forces.

You'll lose the freebie from the Adept, but the ability to build insta-mages (even if it's from only one city) should not be underestimated. I'm not sure how many mana nodes you have under control, but with a bit of micro and some Meta magic you should be able to get access to the spells you want for free.

[Kyan]

You'll lose the freebie from the Adept, but the ability to build insta-mages (even if it's from only one city) should not be underestimated. I'm not sure how many mana nodes you have under control, but with a bit of micro and some Meta magic you should be able to get access to the spells you want for free.

Oh, don't worry there. Krill has that one very much under control! I appreciate the advice though mate.

Sorry for the lull in turn reports and action in this thread. The turns have been moving so very painfully slowly.

First things first:



Very nice. That means AK now produces units starting at 6xp. Talking of AK, there's 3 turns before marble is hooked up so rather than waste non-multiplied hammers, i decided to slot in a quick 3t freak as this city lacks a cage and the extra happy would be sweet.

Our scouting griffon has spotted an elven hunter. We don't have an NAP so we need to ensure we stick to the mountains



Goblins are getting restless by the capital:



Another one spawned meaning there are two roamers. Capital did a 1 turn warrior and we might want to consider a second also. For this reason i left the polar bear healing rather than converted him to a cage. We don't need the happy just yet anyhow.

Welcome to Bardfest! Drama completed. The greatest musicians of our generation continue to flock to Balseraph lands for sex, drugs and sausage rolls.



Quick question also. In this shot, Locke'Cervantes shows +1 happy from national parks. Is this caused by the mirror of heaven?

[Krill]

I like pointing stuff out to Kyan, like the fact he can't actually make a freak show in AK without spoiling the GP pool. That said I do agree with him that we do need a couple more freaks, and we are running short on units.

[Ilios]

Quick question also. In this shot, Locke'Cervantes shows +1 happy from national parks. Is this caused by the mirror of heaven?

Yes.

[Krill]

Comment on amount of vitalizing needs doing. We have:

1. 21 flood plains tiles
   
2. 15 plains tiles
   
3. 21 desert tiles

(Not counting hills)

And that is just in the lands we have settled now. Add on top of that the half dozen desert tiles, half dozen plains tiles that need improving. Due to the Summoner trait, Gibbon can vitalize 2 tiles a turn. I cannot see a way to get to Twincast and use Gibbon as the dispel mage on the nature nodes in a reliable fashion. Unless we get a get an adept out asap from AK and hope it levels up to 10XP by the time we get to Sorcery, but it's not certain.

FWIW, to get Twincast, we would need 37 XP, or 26 with the SotC. That would take Gibbon atleast 10 turns, up to 20 to reach, so you could say that just storing up the XP isn't a bad move abnd keeps our options open. Twincast would double the speed at which we could Vitalize our lands. But do we need it?

But back to our needs. we have 57, call it 65 tiles that we need to vitalize, but flood plains take twice as long. So we are looking at more like 80 turns of vitalizing. Due to Summoner, that's 40 turns of spamming puppets. But that's assuming we we use a spring adept to turn the desert into plains. If we had to wait 15 turns for Twincast, that puts us down to basically taking a dozen turns to vitalize everything in the core empire (and Kyan, that also means you don't screw up the MM, so I'm not particularly happy saying it would only take that long).

I think we need to get a move on towards Deception, but first, we get KotE. We need to get out an adept. I doubt we'll have time to vitalize everything, but I'll give a go. In fact...we might not even need Alteration. If we build Gibbon at 6XP (which we have to in AK with the HE), then we only need 2 Nature mana for us to get N1, 5XP to get N3. With no need to dispel any nodes, it means that we don’t have to save XP for Dispel Magic. That should get us Vitalizing for as long as possible before we rebuild Gibbon.

OK, here's the current plan.

We just finished Drama. Now we tech KotE, we throw down the Catacomb Libralus (15 turns) in the Capital after the Bone palace. After KotE, we run Fishing (fishing boats for health)>Writing>WotWick>HBR>Trade>Deception. After Deception, we can go whichever way we need: the node techs then Sorcery etc. We already have the civics we need, we have the Gbards to trigger a GA, we hopefully get the Bone palace. We are leaving Sanitation behind, but that food only helps us push out settlers and workers, which we don't really need right now. Right now, we can do all of that in 25 turns, at breakeven tech pace. I think that we should do the tech quicker, due to the potential GA and growth.

However, we need to figure out what is happening at AK. We have it making 15hpt which isn’t enough, we need to get it working a normal plains hill mine. That means when we finish the Freak, we’ll have 10h overflow, and Deception minus 23 turns. HE takes 4 turn, 11 overflow hammers, 19 turns remaining. The Lib takes 5 turns, 14t left, 16h overflow. NE takes 4 turns, 10 left. Mage guild takes 5 turns, leaving 5 turns to push out an Adept. OK, we probably have a small amount of time - we do not know where CoE will found, and we need to get the nightwatch to AK, but it would be safer for us to finish the freak, then go onto full building mode. We build into the HE until we have KotE, then we build a mage build. We finish the HE, and we pop out 2 adepts, then we go Lib>NE>SotC. SotC is 167 hammers. The BP golden age should give us 50 hammers. The GB GA should give us another 50 hammers. These numbers won’t change any time soon as AK is going to be forced to stick at size 7 to stick to the deadline, and besides, we lack the happy/health to grow it. We will just about finish the SotC by the time we are ready to start Gibbon, but fortunately, we shouldn’t need the free promo on him the first time.

[Krill]

OK. Killed one of the barb goblins next to the capital for 5XP, and the other one should die next turn rather easily. The weird part of the turn though, was that I built a freak that go came with mutated but didn't have any new promotions? What's happened there then?

Also, if I use a healing salve on a unit with the withered promotion, does that remove teh withered promo?

[Bobchillingworth]

Units who are mutated only have a chance of getting each of about 17 possible promotions. It's rare, but occasionally they'll fail their rolls for all of them and will end up with none at all.


I have no idea if the potion will get rid of withered, but it's kind of a waste to use it for that anyway. Save it for something like a hero unit who almost dies in combat and needs an insta-heal to keep from getting wiped on the defense. Or give it to a blitz trooper to heal between attacks.