Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Man Behind the Mask]

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

Let’s try to keep going, then. The Lurker thread has picked up recently, so hopefully there’s still interest in the game.

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.

I suspect Chronic, Hash Pipe and Cypress Hill are the only places with enough hammers to get the build done, unless we want to blow a lot of cash.

The great question on the Ljosalfar empire right now is Civics… 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.

All of this comes without actually looking at the save. Also a game mechanics question – if we swap out of AV while the civic cooldown is still ticking, what does it do about kicking us out of StW?

I have a feeling that you can swap to Military State and not worry about the 10 turn wait. We’re still needing to save gold every 3-4 turns, and may want to fill the coffers more to cash-rush Bazaar of Mammon. If it looks like the research on Infernal Pact will be done before 10T, we can slip in another tech (Masonry for the Marble, Sanitation for farms to go with Conquest, one of the other Tower techs to save beakers on Sorcery? Maybe even Deception for Undercouncil action after we go Veil?).

So the question then becomes how to offset the lost happiness (1 for religion, plus up to three temples makes a max of 4, I believe). Quick summary of the options, in what I think might be my preliminary order of preference.
- Civics: Republic seems like it will solve most of the problems, but we will take an economic hit. There is the small comfort of hitting the happy cap of our opponents.
- Buildings: The two main contenders are Public Baths (needs Sanitation) or Gambling Houses (and then run breakeven science). We still have the option of a spider-pen to replace the Silk we’re getting from Acolastas.
Trading: Does anyone have a spare Reagents for the Veil Temples (I vaguely remember checking and there being no extra Incense)? Could we camp Nicolae’s Ivory if he agrees to trade it back to us?
- Tech: A quick trip to Drama gets us the Culture slider which we can fiddle for inefficient results.
- Mana: We could swap a node to Enchantment to get an extra happy face (and buff all our warriors a little with an Adept promotion).

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.

I think if we go this route, then everywhere not building the Grimoire should be churning out Veil units. We’ll be close to Clown invasion, and will need a lot of bodies, so I feel we just need to plan out the next little while quite carefully to maximise our stay in any religion. Some past games seem to have shown the error of “building” for a little too long when we know war is coming, so I want to make sure we can properly defend ourselves.

By the way, I agree with Mardoc on the Swordsman . If we’re not building Leaves units (at the very least to spread for the Shrine money), then I’d think one from Archery Range, Hunting Lodge or Mage Guild will be appreciated in Cypress Hill shortly.

Two final thoughts. Given our newfound GNP “sexiness”, we should probably get back in the diplo game to make sure that dogpiles don’t fall apart. Secondly, I’m still not sure how we’ve solving the issues of mana shortage to build the Towers – I don’t even see where we’ll be getting the Tower of Divination mana for that version of the tech plan?

[Mardoc]

Ah, now that I'm more awake, I understand the question a bit better.

I think getting Mobility on all our units is quite important. So if we do swap to MilState now, we should build only Ritualists until we can also swap to StW and Conquest, then fill out our forces with Corpses.

I think, all in all, though, it's still worth the swap. +15% hammers and dramatic unit maint savings are worth giving up 2 XP on Potent/channelling 2/Unholy Taint/MobI Ritualists. They'll make up those 2 XP very quickly with that combination of XP boosts, especially if they're born a bit earlier due to the hammer bonus.

We still want to go into StW/Conquest as soon as we can, to pump out some Mobility Corpses (and maybe Savants or adepts), but we'll be in AV for a while yet.

[Gaspar]

I opened the save to this offer:



Sure, why not?

Then I got this event:



Sure, why not?

I'll send a unit of some sort over there in a bit, mebbe get lucky.

I decided to go against the wishes of the whole team and convert to AV this turn. It did throw Paradise City into unhappy, but I have our Savant en route to convert it. Research started on Infernal Pact, due in 2T. At which point we switch to Republic/StW/Military State/Conquest and churn out a glorious army with which to get killed by many puppets.

Is it worth building Rosier to deny him to Hyborem, or worth letting Hybie build him instead to hopefully defend against whatever? I do suspect we'll go back to leaves at least for a bit somewhere down the road if we keep playing, so it may still be too early for religious hero building.

Here's a shot of our now eviller lands:

[Man Behind the Mask]

Acolastas ,Nicolae and Brian have played the turn, so I’ll assume we continue...

I opened the save to this offer

Awesome. That solves some of my worries about the Tower plan. Probably worth getting Metamagic 1 on a couple of Adepts, as the one we want to level up is bound to be the slowest to gain XP.

I decided to go against the wishes of the whole team and convert to AV this turn.

I was personally just going along with the plan you proposed. Probably remiss of me not to suggest this alternative, as it actually does look better from both a military and economic perspective.

A couple of points of detail. You might need to watch the happy cap in rapid-growing Kaya – it’s got a Veil Temple so will lose two happy faces when we swap out of Religion, but isn’t big enough to get the compensation from Republic – Carnival and Tiger could be needed soon. I was going to say that now is the time to build forts so there’s a chance for upgrade before the Clowns come calling, but then remembered we don’t have Construction yet. Probably need to slot it in, if only for road movement. We do need to get on with the Arcane techs quite quickly, since it would be a big disappointment if Hyborem stole the Grimoire.

Is it worth building Rosier to deny him to Hyborem, or worth letting Hybie build him instead to hopefully defend against whatever?

If he’s a fairly quick build, it might not hurt to have him hanging around the Sheaim front if we can do effective hit-and-runs with his extra mobility. I wouldn’t place much confidence on one unit in the hands of the AI – playing SP, I normally find heroes wandering around on their own.

There is one massive decision to be made... will you be swapping to Hyborem?

[Ichabod]

Ichabod in particular has shown to be both brilliant and ruthless in his play here, but I don't expect either of them to do much driving, neither is an especially prolific poster in their own threads, let alone in someone else's.

Haha, that's what I'm talking about! Brilliant and ruthless! And a Killer's eye, don't forget the killer's eye:

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/01/14

Hello, there, by the way! Sorry to barge in the thread like that!

This surely seems like a crazy good read!

P.S.: I'm not dedlurking Brian anymore.

[Mardoc]

Hey, we had to get into AV sooner or later. Our army will be multiplied immensely by having Ritualists around.

Given Nicolae's latest tech thread post - maybe we should move some of them down into Sheaim lands sooner rather than later? Ideally we'd keep the PoL around until every tile is Bloomed, though.

Or...maybe it really is about to be over. I am confused!

[Gaspar]

Acolastas ,Nicolae and Brian have played the turn, so I’ll assume we continue...

Who knows. I'll keep playing until they pry the save from my cold, dead hands.

Awesome. That solves some of my worries about the Tower plan. Probably worth getting Metamagic 1 on a couple of Adepts, as the one we want to level up is bound to be the slowest to gain XP.

I put it on Sensational Sherri immediately. There's an Adept born beginning of next turn who will get it as well. Suggestions for the next valet, MBTM?

I was personally just going along with the plan you proposed. Probably remiss of me not to suggest this alternative, as it actually does look better from both a military and economic perspective.

A couple of points of detail. You might need to watch the happy cap in rapid-growing Kaya – it’s got a Veil Temple so will lose two happy faces when we swap out of Religion, but isn’t big enough to get the compensation from Republic – Carnival and Tiger could be needed soon. I was going to say that now is the time to build forts so there’s a chance for upgrade before the Clowns come calling, but then remembered we don’t have Construction yet. Probably need to slot it in, if only for road movement. We do need to get on with the Arcane techs quite quickly, since it would be a big disappointment if Hyborem stole the Grimoire.

Yeah, I think we pretty much are locked into IP -> (Mana tech) -> Sorcery for the next 3 techs if we want to get the Tower stuff efficiently. I'm inclined for Alteration, both due to the ease of getting that particular tower done and the value of its mana in the short term - Body in particular needs to be on our adepts shortly. But we pretty much have to start the Grimoire right away, particularly in our Forge-less state where we are somewhat production limited on big ticket items. Agreed as well that Kaya needs some happiness support.

There is one massive decision to be made... will you be swapping to Hyborem?

Naturally.

Haha, that's what I'm talking about! Brilliant and ruthless! And a Killer's eye, don't forget the killer's eye:

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/01/14

Hello, there, by the way! Sorry to barge in the thread like that!

This surely seems like a crazy good read!

P.S.: I'm not dedlurking Brian anymore.

In truth, the quality of the read does diminish as the game goes on, unfortunately. We get all bogged down in stuff like, playing the game. And I stop making RP interludes. Something I resolve to fix in the next iteration.

Hey, we had to get into AV sooner or later. Our army will be multiplied immensely by having Ritualists around.

Given Nicolae's latest tech thread post - maybe we should move some of them down into Sheaim lands sooner rather than later? Ideally we'd keep the PoL around until every tile is Bloomed, though.

Or...maybe it really is about to be over. I am confused!

My basic thinking was if T150 is D-Day, we've got to get our military on the board. Our economy would be better long-term just staying in Leaves all game, or at least until every tile was Ancient Forested. But our military frankly sucks right now, so if we need to support our *ahem* allies, we need to get started soon.

I still expect the game to be called before I get to enact any of this, but I'm glad you all are still playing along.

[Gaspar]

Kaya: Market -> Carnival (2)

Other than that, extraordinarily quiet turn...


...except for this:

[Man Behind the Mask]

Suggestions for the next valet, MBTM?

I think Missy Hyatt best fits the time period for our first two, but I was always rather partial to Trish Stratus.

[SIZE="1"]*Pretty sure proper FFH7 welcome means agreeing to a 150 turn nap with the Balseraphs followed by forgetting to send along the save [/SIZE]

I laughed, but I’m not sure the others will – perhaps a little too close to the bone. Hyborem will definitely play his turn quickly!

[Man Behind the Mask]

So... RB was broken...