Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Thoth]

Military State gives increased unit support (+1 per 5 pop points in your empire) so it will almost always save you gold in excess of it's civic maint + it gives you +15% military production + the ability to cash rush + the ability to draft.

Best civic in the column (with the possible exception of StW powered Slavery, and I'm not convinced of that).

Apprenticeship is good early for some experienced troops (and has situational uses later if it will take you over an xp break point when combined with Conquest/Theocracy/FotT/Command Posts) but as a utility Civic it's damn hard to top Mil State.

There are some good reasons I never swapped out of Mil State in either III or XI.

[Gaspar]

I get so used to our thread being the last updated that I've almost clicked on the lurker thread/someone else's thread almost everytime that its not.

Hash Pipe: Adept -> Temple of the Veil (1)

Adept #2 born, decided to go with Sensational Sherri as the natural follow-up. I didn't take a promo yet since I don't think we need a 2nd water adept with no other desert and otherwise I'd rather wait for a Body node, Haste will be far more useful.

Other than that, extraordinarily quiet turn. Taxation came in @EOT, however - how about a 63 bpt jump? That's a GNP of 102 more than 2nd place with no tech selected.



Look at all the pretty sacks of cash.



Lest we get too busy sucking each others popsicles, to quote Winston Wolf, obviously without a runaway Balseraphs we'd have faced invasions by the zombies and/or horsies by now and wouldn't be in anywhere near this good of a shape. Still, no complaints about the domestic side of the game now.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Having now reached where we have, I think I’d feel we ended in a much less unsatisfactory position if the game did draw to a close. On a global scale, one turn into a dogpile war against the weakest civ in the game felt like a really funny time to call a halt. I know that the turn pace continues to drag, but there hasn’t been a second call to stop, I presume because the ball’s in our court. Do we want to keep playing?

Assuming we carry on, I think I agree with Gaspar’s general tech path. Tower techs and a detour to grab the Grimoire feel like our best shot. The biggest difficulty is going to be the mana trading/swapping, especially in the absence of a mage, and a limited number of other civs.

There should probably be a little diversion or two. In terms of grabbing Iron Working, I think I’d rather use Rangers. They need much less tech, have more mobility and don’t have counter-promotions. If we’re cash-rich, then we can upgrade Leaves Disciples for fewer hammers and free Mobility. We should probably also use less than a turn of research each for Warfare, Military Strategy, Masonry and Construction (plus Sanitation if we’re thinking of using Conquest Civic).

As far as other matters go, we need to start shifting from economy to military if we do intend to defend ourselves. Getting a couple of GPs will help as well, but I think knocking up some gold-multiplier buildings and then cranking Priests, Rangers, Ritualists and Corpses has to be the order of the day.

[Gaspar]

Meh, I guess we should just call it on turn pace. Seems there's always something coming up with this game, its slowed to an absolute screeching halt. Unfortunate, because I think we're about 10 turns from being a real pain in the butt to deal with.

[Mardoc]

Meh, I guess we should just call it on turn pace. Seems there's always something coming up with this game, its slowed to an absolute screeching halt. Unfortunate, because I think we're about 10 turns from being a real pain in the butt to deal with.

Yeah . Maybe we can get the official verdict to be 'called on turn pace' and not 'conceded to the might of the Clowns'. Because honestly, as broken as Keelyn is, I still think we could at least defend against Krill, given the time it'll take for him to fight through either the Hippus or Sheaim.

[darrelljs]

Who is slowing the turns down again? If you think you have a shot at winning, certainly don't concede.

Darrell

[Man Behind the Mask]

I’ve re-read what’s in the tech thread. Acolastas will soon be dead. Krill wants to stop, presumably because it’s not wholly his game and microing a thousand units through a one-sided battle isn’t that fun. Nicolae looks like he wants to stop for personal reasons, but has actually been really good about playing the save since a few early hiccups.

You've already heard from me as regards conceding, I'm willing (but not happy). If the consensus is yes, I'll give my full reasons.

This looks like Brian wants to keep playing. I think he genuinely believes he can pull something out of the bag via a Clown-NAP and Sanctuary.

I still frankly don't want to be playing now, so I'm making an open call for any unspoiled lurker or remaining hippus dedlurker to replace me.

I'm pretty much entirely just playing out of duty to all the lurkers.

These seem much more committal than his most recent comments in the tech thread (power problems aside). I suspect he may carry on if required, but is truly not that bothered about the game.

I think I’d personally quite like to see what happens and what we can conjure up for when the Clowns come knocking. Brian will probably go along with that if he hasn’t changed his mind. However, I suspect we’ll continue to see slow turns if the other players are disinterested. Can you cope with that, Gaspar, or will the frustration make it not worth it?

I’m actually worried that we’ll play for another 15 turns (maybe a whole month in the real world?), then there’ll be another call for an end, and we’ll still not have reached the exciting part for us. If that is going to happen, we might be best to call it now, read some other threads, and concentrate on newer games. If we do propose to continue, we should probably make it clear that we want to go on for a while to come.

[Gaspar]

Well, it probably is best to call it now, but I really don't want to.





I'd like to build the Pillar of Chains somewhere - its a pretty awesome wonder. Just not sure there's a stellar place for it. The capital is obvious but it has many things to build in the near term. I have it working on a Money Changer at the moment, fwiw.

The great question on the Ljosalfar empire right now is Civics. We researched Warfare this turn (put us onto Alteration so our GNP still looks sexy. The things you can do with long, nebulous NAPs.) My intent was to swap to Military State next turn and nothing else (We still sort of need the Religion happy, as previously stated.) However, the current plan is to research, in relatively this order, Alteration -> Sorcery -> Infernal Pact -> Arcane Lore -> Grimoire to Strength of Will. Or Grimoire Arcane Lore and then slow Tower of Divination SoW. However, the period in Veil (we'll likely return to leaves before finally landing for good on Veil or possibly Empy, if we'd like Chalid and Ratha rather than Beasties and the like) will correspond with a large military build-up. In that case, does it make more sense to wait until we research Infernal Pact and spend 10T in StW + Conquest? The happy cap issues will be prevalent - though we could take Liberty for those 10T as well to alleviate them to some extent.

What sayeth the council?

In the interim, Acalostas is down to 1 city and gifted us silk again.



Here's an F1 for current builds. Decided to bang out a quick Sword just to have one. I need an answer on the Civics question before next turn, because I think we should grab the Pact next if we're going to do that. Be interesting to see if Hyborem pops in the great Grigori wasteland or on an island.

[Mardoc]

wait until we research Infernal Pact

I do believe that's impossible, that one cannot research Infernal Pact until in AV.

I would like to get some Ritualists on the field (why are we building a sword!?!?), though. Along with some Diseased Corpses for our hope of adept/mage assassination. How are we doing on AV temples? Can we get a decent number of these built in a quick jaunt? Finally having some collateral to go with the Tigers will be a major military boon. And spawning Hyby will just be fun, wrecking the rest of the world

I'm not convinced that running StW + Conquest will be better than just running forest mines and towns, if it cuts our happy caps a lot. Especially since we'll likely still be building some buildings/wonders, not just units. Still, on the whole I would approve of going to StW + Conquest in order to have the +XP during our military buildup, so everyone can be Mobility.

In any event, I do approve of a path that gets us a tower of div and the grimoire in the near term, to enable the towers.

[Gaspar]

I do believe that's impossible, that one cannot research Infernal Pact until in AV.

I meant wait until after research Infenal Pact to civic swap, not religion swap.

I'll wait to comment any more until others weigh in.