This Time for Sure: Mardoc reprises the Lanun

[Mardoc]

I suppose that's true, 3 strong food resources, a cow, and 2 coves is a bit overkill for a city. Even a city that starts at size 7 for 2 happiness and Cha, that's still leaving essentially no room for any other tiles to be worked, or else leaving the resources unworked.

[Thoth]

More strong tiles early >>>an uber city later.

Uber cities are a lot of fun.

We'll have a couple of them (Cap + the Offshore HT city) but lots of good tiles worked early via Exp settlers and some overlap is win.

Small cities working good tiles don't need to spend hammers on happy improvements to work those tiles.

The only thing in FFH that prevents ICS from being the dominant strat is the high cost of settlers. And we get discounted Settlers until t70.

A quickie sandbox had me with 5 cities and 4 settlers by t70 + OO (no overseas cities though). (actual game milage will vary by a lot depending on barbs, tech choices, random events, city and worker micro (which depends a bunch on the barbs) ect ect) but that's a game winning early game set up if we can capitalize on it.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Thanks very much for the updated pictures. It’s certainly looking like we’re going to have very productive cities.

I’m still not feeling strongly about any of the dotmap decisions. I think Thoth has been very convincing on his placement for city 1, but I’m still interested in seeing how things might fit together further east. I’ll try to provide some proper advice in 20 turns’ time. Thoth is right that actually working tiles is more important than having the basis for an elegantly arranged empire 100 turns down the line.

If we can find the hammers for the units to defend them, then the map does look ripe for expanding everywhere with extreme expedience. Everything we can do to get out to a strong start will be valuable given the late-game powers of our opponents.

[Man Behind the Mask]

And now for something more significant.... We mentioned this when the game was starting for the first time, but we still haven’t got around to doing anything. So with a distinctly Lanun focus, let’s have a look at

Tech Tree Changes in EitB

Sareln’s general aim has been to flatten the tech tree a little. For the “mundane” techs, the final elements of the branches have been reduced in cost to encourage greater use of the National Units. The religious side has been significantly redesigned. The arcane section of the tree remains largely the same. I ought to provide two pictures for comparison, but that would require a load of stitching and resizing. Here’s a lady pirate instead!


There have been some major moves due to the changes in the mod.
- In terms of individual techs, Divine Essence shifts from its somewhat bizarre position at the end of the melee tree to be the culmination of the religious branch. You can now become Omniscient by following either the religious or arcane path. Military Strategy has been added a pre-req for three of the Mastery level mundane unit techs. Finally, Stirrups can be taken with either Animal Handling or Archery (although I’ve no idea why you’d choose the former).
- The most significant redesign comes with the religious section of the tree. Now, each individual religion’s path ends in a different place: Leaves and Kilmorph end with Commune with Nature (although you can also get there through Fanaticism); Order and Empyrean end with Righteousness; AV and OO go to Malevolent Designs. More importantly, Ways of the Wicked and Wise have been dropped entirely.

Given some of the adjustments, what’s most interesting for us is how the total number of beakers has changed to get at any particular tech target. Sareln also produced a very helpful analysis of costs, which I’m going to shamelessly pilfer from – in fact I’m not even going to make the adjustment for beakers under this game’s settings, as it’s the relativity that’s most interesting (I think our actual costs will be a little higher).

Firstly, and maybe most importantly, there have been no changes at all to the path to Optics. That means that unlocking the Worldspell and the Black Wind will cost exactly as much as it always would. Astronomy at the end of that branch is cheaper.

For Guybrush Threepwood, the path to Iron Working has been significantly reduced in cost. Smelting halves from 1600 to 800, and Iron Working itself reduces 2600 to 1200. That means that you need less than half the number of beakers after Bronzeworking to get to Iron units and our land-based Hero.

On the Arcane side, there have been no changes to either the shape of the tree or the cost of techs. You therefore need the same number of beakers to get to mages and archmages. What has changed is the bulb priority for scientists, so they will bulb Sorcery ahead of the individual mana techs.

Apart from changing the shape of the tree, most of the tech costs on the Religious side have been left as they were. The especially interesting thing for us is the move for Slavery back to Philosophy from Way of the Wicked. That saves 280 beakers from getting access to the civic, essentially a third of the previous cost, puts it only a single tech after Mysticism, and somewhere we’re likely to go anyway on the way to Priests. A settler slaving spree just before the trait switch seems much more plausible.

Finally, a quick word on our competitors. The most significant difference will actually be seen by Darrell. Hunting has reduced in cost, so he’ll have an earlier religion and Worldspell, and all of the techs in the recon portion of the tree now cost less. Bowyers has also halved in cost so there’s more incentive to take advantage of the Dextrous trait. That last observation also applies to Tatan’s Amurites getting to Firebows. If uberfish wants to blow up the world, then he’ll find the cost of Corruption of the Spirit increased (more than compensating for the loss of WotWicked) and also need more beakers for Infernal Pact.

[Mardoc]

...Wow. Two useful contributions.

First, Thoth - is that 4 settlers in addition to the 5 cities? If so - I agree, that's a very strong position to be in. What do we need to do, in general, to achieve that? Just straightforward building only the W's (worker, warrior, workboat, wsettler)? Or were there any twists involved?

Thanks for the tech analysis, MBTM! The sum total of changes in tech tree certainly sounds like Iron Working is the Lanun way to go; that route unlocks

• Forges
  
• Guybrush
  
• Boarding Parties
  
• Iron Weapons
  
• Half of Frigates
  
• Shipyards
  

It therefore helps with just about every aspect of the civ - getting some decent hammers, decent military, good navy, hero...I think the only question is when we go for it, not if. But we're certainly not going to do the standard base FFH approach of 'is there any possible way we can avoid researching it'

So...when do we want to go for it?

Forge + Shipyard = 300 hammers, and we want them most in locations where we don't currently have many hammers. I think we need some form of rushing, first. Probably the best form for us will be Military State, although I could be argued into Slavery.

Given this map, actually, I'm strongly tempted to use the Guild of Hammers - it breaks even at about 2 cities (ignoring any non-Forge benefits), and we're looking at having 20+ cities, I think. Again, PBEM3 taught me that the way to get there is with cash rush So Engineering will need to be achieved before the foes get there, and with some form of rushing available to us.

So, what's this mean? It means that although Iron Working is definitely on our preferred path, it's going to be a while before we go there. Iron gives us options, but for the most part we need to fill in other economy techs in order to take full advantage. It's competing with our desire to get up to Trade (Foreign Trade FTW!), up to at least Festivals (maybe Drama) and Sanitation, up to Military Strategy for command posts (and MilState, other goodies), Octopus Overlords, Taxation to benefit the towns we'll lay down (I'm assuming we want a Foreign Trade cottage/cove econ, not aristograrianism), and probably more that I'm forgetting.

For the time being, the focus needs to be on worker techs, BW & Sailing, OO, and of course the REX. After that - I think our first major econ tech should be Trade.

Getting Foreign Trade early, to finance city spam and mature a bunch of coves and cottages means that we'll be able to afford to swap back out, when it's time for, say, Conquest-fueled Mages . Foreign Trade will be useful for any cottage econ, but especially good for us since it boosts coves as well, and extra trade for our coastal cities.

[Thoth]

Yeah. Cap + 4 cities settled (on the mainland) and 4 settlers in hand.

At size 11, working Fish, Corn, 2 Harbours, Pigs, Wines and 4 mines (plus a river cottage) the Cap produces 20h and +14 food = 54 hammers/turn when building settlers. (Happy for size 11 came from OO + Religion + Cotton). Rice/Cow spent most of it's time pushing out warriors but did contribute 1 Settler.

Obviously a sim that many turns in advance isn't going to reflect the actual in game situation. Too many variables. But it was fun.

Iron working: Definitely want this (Guybush lets us unlock the Shrine of the Champion as soon as we build and disband him ) Iron, shipyards and a few forges (if we don't grab GoH, then we'll want a couple of forges in our high hammer cities, but they take far to long to payback their investment elsewhere).

Agreed we want economy techs before pushing for Iron (Writing, Trade, Currency and possibly Taxation before IW).

Other things to consider: When do we want our first GP? and what do we want it to be? I'm in favour of a GS for an Academy, probably farmed in the Fish/Pig city. It'll take awhile to get the Harbour/Elder council up, but this city has little other than food/commerce so it makes a decent early GP farm.

The other option is to grab a Great Prophet to shrine OO. Extra gold/water mana is nice, but I think the Academy is stronger.

[Mardoc]

Yeah. Cap + 4 cities settled (on the mainland) and 4 settlers in hand.

This is a worthy goal! Tonight I plan to work on extending the dotmap; we probably have enough defogged for at least 5 more cities to be set in stone.

I assume your sim also had worker support and a fair number of defenders? Or do we need to back off a smidgen to get those as well?

Were the settlers around because they were all created at the end, or just because you haven't extended the sandbox to where they'll end up going? If the latter, then I think we can expect a little more than your sandbox if those cities can contribute anything to the REX.

Finally - were you able to apply Exp to any Sea Havens or Granaries? I don't think they're as important as MOAR SETTLERS, but if we can get at least Sea Havens built at half price (while growing, say), I'll be happier .

Other things to consider: When do we want our first GP? and what do we want it to be? I'm in favour of a GS for an Academy, probably farmed in the Fish/Pig city. It'll take awhile to get the Harbour/Elder council up, but this city has little other than food/commerce so it makes a decent early GP farm.

The other option is to grab a Great Prophet to shrine OO. Extra gold/water mana is nice, but I think the Academy is stronger.

All in all I agree the Academy is stronger for now. I do think the OO shrine will eventually pay more as this is a very big map. But it won't help the early snowball nearly as much, and our game has to be about the early snowball.

[Mardoc]

Fishing in at end of turn! Workboats imminent!

Also, we kept exploring, found a 3rd mana node and a deer; still not quite enough that I want to do a lot of dotmapping, though. 2-3 turns from now, when the scouts have the middle section filled in, then we ought to be able to go for ring 2.

Assuming we all have the same mana, that definitely suggests a mage-heavy gameplan as a strong one. Tatan will be loving it, with all those nodes to turn into XP. We're going to have to make sure we stop by Poisons .

[Mardoc]

For Thoth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlqdqNGhJaA

[Thoth]

This is a worthy goal! Tonight I plan to work on extending the dotmap; we probably have enough defogged for at least 5 more cities to be set in stone.

We can do better than that I think, once I had the second city settled I played fairly fast and sloppy. Barb activity will have a huge impact on the end results.

I assume your sim also had worker support and a fair number of defenders? Or do we need to back off a smidgen to get those as well?

Build order (after 3rd WB) went Worker, Worker, Settler, Worker, Worker, Settler, workboat (with avoid growth on). Barbs shouldn't be much of a problem until after t50 so we've got some time.

Ricecow will need to be on fulltime Warrior duty until after it hits it's happy cap. Once the barbs start spawning, all this open land means we'll be seeing a lot of them come turn 50.,

Were the settlers around because they were all created at the end, or just because you haven't extended the sandbox to where they'll end up going? If the latter, then I think we can expect a little more than your sandbox if those cities can contribute anything to the REX.

A bit of both. And we can do better than that sim. Note that my earlier estimate of F/H was off. At size 11 under GodKing we can knock out 2 settlers every 5 turns assuming all improved tiles.

Finally - were you able to apply Exp to any Sea Havens or Granaries? I don't think they're as important as MOAR SETTLERS, but if we can get at least Sea Havens built at half price (while growing, say), I'll be happier .

Managed two Sea Havens. One in the Cap (built straight after the two workers) and one in Pig/Fish.


I'm pretty certain we can do better than this.




All in all I agree the Academy is stronger for now. I do think the OO shrine will eventually pay more as this is a very big map. But it won't help the early snowball nearly as much, and our game has to be about the early snowball.[/quote]

Fishing in at end of turn! Workboats imminent!

Also, we kept exploring, found a 3rd mana node and a deer; still not quite enough that I want to do a lot of dotmapping, though. 2-3 turns from now, when the scouts have the middle section filled in, then we ought to be able to go for ring 2.

Assuming we all have the same mana, that definitely suggests a mage-heavy gameplan as a strong one. Tatan will be loving it, with all those nodes to turn into XP. We're going to have to make sure we stop by Poisons .

You don't have to convince me of the value of picking up some Assasins.

Those Nodes are good for us as well. The more Nodes we can grab, the stronger the Insta Mage strat becomes.

From the looks of that screenshot, you've mucked up the tile micro.

:Krillrant: :Krillrant:

Tighter tile micro would have finished up the warrior the same turn we finished Fishing.

:Krillrant: :Krillrant:

As things are, aim to finish the warrior the same turn we grow to size 4, then work max hammers to get the Fishing Boats out