Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Thanks for the thoughts, MBTM. I think I'm inclined to go for the double Settler gambit. And the Spider is indeed quite scary, definitely could lose the Hunter on the IT.

My current inclination is to settle the Sheep city in the north and the rice city in the south. I'm a big believer in letting your borders grow naturally, and those are the two natural expansion spots. Add to that the Barb city shortly when we get Priests in the field and then we can plant the lousy city in between Hash Pipe and Rawkking. The reason I don't like the southern blocking Nicolae city is that it seems unnecessary to antagonize him. If we want, he'll be trivial to take out when our NAP expires. If we don't want, it could be useful to maintain an ally. Regardless, he expands so slowly that we can probably poach what we want to when we want to there as well.

The big news from this turn MBTM has shared. We have good vision into Rawkking's territory and we have a very scary spider next to Terra Ryzing. We also flawlessly defeated the kill team. Here's pictures of those events:



If that copper is Rawkking's, we could definitely settle it on him. He won't be dealing with a C4 spider well anytime soon, particularly if we used it to harass him. He also settled another city this turn, just barely visible in that shot, Ramalot. Its right on the Clown border.



Not shown - Copper, Ale.

Here's a picture of the south. I moved a warrior out of Paradise City towards the new site as well as a worker to the area to road for a trade connection. I popped up the event log so you could see the kill team suiciding. One of the warriors in Cypress Hill now has 11 XP so we should probably give him an appropriate jobber name. Thoughts, MBTM?

[NobleHelium]

Ouch, marble. Was the Bone Palace built?

[Gaspar]

Ouch, marble. Was the Bone Palace built?

Aye, in the Clown capital.

[Gaspar]

2 events on the IT - our Hunter killed the spider, and Empyrean was founded in San Francisco, the Sheaim city on our border. In the accompanying Hawk shot, you can see Nicolae popped the lair by San Francisco so that had to be where the Ecclesiastic came from. Woulda put it in Domir if I were him.



Terra is pretty injured and there's a bear in the area so we'll move away now. I flew the hawk North-ish though, revealing a tundra'd island. Perhaps Letum Frigus? Might be worth going up there for that, even if we're unlikely to ever see an Archmage. It also looks like Rawkking is moving a zealot into his border city with us finally. After these 2, I'd like 2 more quickly on his border.



Other than that operation 2 more cities soon continues apace. By the by, we're currently last in soldier points.

[Mardoc]

2 events on the IT - our Hunter killed the spider, and Empyrean was founded in San Francisco, the Sheaim city on our border. In the accompanying Hawk shot, you can see Nicolae popped the lair by San Francisco so that had to be where the Ecclesiastic came from. Woulda put it in Domir if I were him.

Probably should shoot him a quick congratulations.

By killed the spider, you mean captured, right? As in, we now have a C4 spider to play with?

Other than that operation 2 more cities soon continues apace. By the by, we're currently last in soldier points.

Not surprising - should change very rapidly in 3 turns .

[Man Behind the Mask]

One of the warriors in Cypress Hill now has 11 XP so we should probably give him an appropriate jobber name. Thoughts, MBTM?

Important matters first! I’d consider “Iron” Mike Sharpe for some subtle misdirection (“Copper” Mike Sharpe just doesn’t have the same ring to it). If you want to rename all of the Cypress Hill crew at the same time, we’re still lacking an Al Snow-Stevie Richards-Blue Meanie trio, or the Mean Street Posse? Here’s another cryptic one… we’ve got a pair of units and one of them could be renamed “Animal”.

Other than that operation 2 more cities soon continues apace.

I hope NH approves of the quick decision! Hash Pipe is ahead on improved tiles, and grows slowly, so we can swipe a worker from there to start sheep city off. The southeast spot can get a pair from Paradise City, so we’re not going to be too short on workers. Maybe we’ll be slightly shy on a full garrison to start with, but that’s what NAPs (and spiders) are for.

Empyrean was founded in San Francisco, the Sheaim city on our border. In the accompanying Hawk shot, you can see Nicolae popped the lair by San Francisco so that had to be where the Ecclesiastic came from.

A religion is definitely a better result than three spectres before Turn 10. Maybe Nicolae got the best deal out of our original NAP?

Probably should shoot him a quick congratulations.

I’d also like to get another message of to the Hippus soon, given the relative non-response to our last one. We’ve still got some topics from Mardoc’s list earlier and we haven’t touched base since the Golden Age-fest begun. Could also ask about the owner of Heron Throne?

Not long to go before the next tech decision. What do people fancy? Most likely options seem to be (in order of cost)…

Economic

Cartography (1-2T) – for open borders and possibly City States
Code of Laws (2-3T) – for Aristocracy and courthouses
Writing (3T) – for libraries (Great Library still available)

Military

Archery (2T) – better city defenders, but mostly for Gilden.
Warfare (2-3T) – extra civics, but also opens National Epic.
Overlords (3T) – for Cultists to defend our border in the north (and exploration?)
Ashen Veil = Knowledge of the Ether (3T), Way of the Wicked (2T), Corruption of Spirit (7-8T). Obviously there are some benefits along the way to the Temples and Ritualists.

I’m a bit undecided but my first instinct is actually to pick up Cartography. It may have almost reached the point where maintenance costs (particularly with two new cities on the way) make City States more attractive than God King. I’m a little wary of Aristocracy with Hash Pipe being so reliant on the farms to grow. Hopefully, any trade route income will be a reasonable substitute for the Aristocracy commerce bonus. The big thing behind my thinking is actually that Cartography opens us some benefits but requires us to spend no hammers to access them (unlike, e.g., libraries), while we have Priests and Carnivals to build.

[Mardoc]

I think we ought to stick with economic techs for the time being. We're about to make a dramatic step up in combat effectiveness when we start training Priests; I don't see a need for another military tech until we're at least satisfied with our PoL numbers. At least as long as we're thinking defensively.

I like Writing, both for the libraries and to head toward Trade and Currency/Taxation. But I could be talked into a quick jaunt to Cartography; open borders would be worth 5-7 gpt, in addition to whatever benefit we get from City States and diplomacy. Especially since we will be hammer constrained for a little while yet. I'm pretty sure we'll need both CoL and Writing on the way to Taxation and Trade, though. And given the cottage economy, Taxation will be vital for us, so we definitely need to head in that direction.

Ashen Veil is a good target sooner or later, too, and is even partially economic in nature (especially with it being already spread and the Holy City ours ). But for the time being I'd stick with purely economic techs.

[Gaspar]

I agree that Aristocracy is probably a non-starter for us at the moment - without Agrarian food Hash Pipe is fairly well screwed. We'd at least need Sanitation before we can consider going Aristocracy prior to working all the tiles we want to work. On that logic, Cartography and City States has some value - I agree that God King is probably going to be close to the end of its usefulness once the next 2 sites are planted, and certainly within 10-ish turns when we get around to taking Kahbalg.

I also think we're going to be building a lot of Priests, not to mention still needing some things like Markets and the like in the newer Burgs. So any tech which mostly relies on us building something to get benefit from it is probably worth throwing on the back burner.

Ultimately we really need to settle on a victory condition. If we're going culture, we should be moving towards the wonders we need (not to mention grabbing Masonry to hook Marble.) If we're going tower probably full speed ahead towards Economic techs (i.e. Trade and Taxation.) Short term I'm inclined towards Cartography -> Writing. But I could be talked out of that.

[Commodore]

My vote is still domination, I got to say. You think Kyan's land is better? Take it from him! Burn the world, man, burn the world.

[Mardoc]

I also think we're going to be building a lot of Priests, not to mention still needing some things like Markets and the like in the newer Burgs. So any tech which mostly relies on us building something to get benefit from it is probably worth throwing on the back burner.

Not to mention things that hardly any cities have: carnivals and temples to kilmorph. Carnivals especially will be nice to have very soon, when we have Tigers to fill them with .

Ultimately we really need to settle on a victory condition. If we're going culture, we should be moving towards the wonders we need (not to mention grabbing Masonry to hook Marble.) If we're going tower probably full speed ahead towards Economic techs (i.e. Trade and Taxation.) Short term I'm inclined towards Cartography -> Writing. But I could be talked out of that.

I like the idea of Culture - but ultimately I think Tower will be easier to manage. I also don't think we're going to get around to sandboxing before we'll need to have decided, so gut feel is all we're going to have on which to decide. We've three nodes very shortly, and we know where a 4th is if we can't figure out how to get our mana peacefully. And looking at the requirements - only Tower of Divination requires 4 mana we don't already have (assuming our AV shrine gets built in time). It's the easiest one to justify trading for without giving away our intentions, too - and if Nicolae builds the Empy shrine, he'll have the Sun mana we need.

And in that vein, probably Cart -> Writing makes sense, although don't take my word for that until I've had a chance to stare at the tech tree some more .