This Time for Sure: Mardoc reprises the Lanun

[Selrahc]

Nor will they be assaulting us amphibiously

Why not? They have the potential to water walk...

[Mardoc]

Why not? They have the potential to water walk...

Not without Elementalism and Sorcery/Arcane Lore/Govannon, they don't.

Not saying we're safe forever, just that we don't have to worry this instant. Heck, he could tech to Sailing, too, probably much sooner. But he isn't there now. Which means we still have time to push our farmer's gambit a bit further, I think, so long as we keep an eye out.

[Thoth]

Played T98, all by myself this time . I don't think I made any mistakes, the general principles seem clear.

In foreign news, Ilios built the Tablets of Bambur. Nothing else in the log. So...with Bone Palace due at the end of next turn, we've only got one turn remaining for someone to try a steal. Fingers crossed!

Workers worked on getting our 2nd copper ASAP, via settlement, rushed a workboat in the island city about to grow (Jib Boom, I think), set all the other workers to workshops or lumbermills, except those bringing Incense to market, who worked on a road. Rearranged cities a bit once the whales were connected, so that they're all working improved tiles again.

Mostly good...except we didn't need the road to connect the Riverside Incense.

So. Hi, Buddy! I went ahead and moved the Galley NE, back out of sight. Well, maybe out of sight - as you'll see later, he's got KotE, and thus a chance of a Floating Eye.

Possibly....but keeping the Galley away from his shore is a good play. We're not guaranteed to deprive him of knowledge of what direction we came from, but it's worth a shot.

What's to know about buddy Tatan?


Somehow, I don't think there will be *many* Firebows from Friend Tatan . Nor will they be assaulting us amphibiously . It does mean that he's prickly enough that we probably shouldn't be planning to invade him, at least not quite yet. We've got plenty of peaceful expansion sites to grab first, anyway.

That's one hell of a beeline. His Civics mean he can build Level 3 Firebows....thankfully he doesn't have many cities to build them from.

Finally, we discovered an annoying oceanic barrier in the south.

Not much of a barrier, we can still continue to the South/East in hopes of Circumnavigation.

Plans for the future? Pretty much keep on keeping on. Once the Epics and wonders finish up, we ought to have room for more than three settlers in queue at once. Which is good, we still have lots to grow to. Techwise, we're going Carto, Sanitation, Smelting, Iron Working, then...probably grab the mana techs and Sorcery? Although we might want to go Mind Stapling and Priesthood first, to get full use out of OO. Or maybe Taxation, to make all our villages and towns extra nice. Or...there's still a lot of choices out there, even at 1/turn .

Techwise....after Iron Working, I like KotE (to get some Mage Guilds and a few Adepts up), Priesthood (Cultists....yummy), then either Nerve Stapling and Religious Law (order depends on the timing. We *really* want RL for Theo/Conquest before our GAs run out.)

Then hit the Node techs, Sorcery and Poisons.

After that....umm...dunno. Lots of tasty options, but we do need more war toys ASAP.

[Thoth]

Also....we have two settlers completing next turn.

I'd like to use one of them to settle the Inner Sea. We'll need to cash rush a Galley in the Copper/Corn city, but this would get us Pearls very quickly (and another offshore city). We'll definitely want one of our forward units to go with the settler for defence, but I think the play is worthwhile given our growth rates/happy caps.


And let's offer Open Borders to Tatan. It's a gesture of friendship plus we'll get a bit of extra commerce in Mainmast. He'll get a *lot* more out of the deal than we do once he techs to Sailing and Trade but I think it's worth it even if only for the diplo points.

Under no circumstances should we trade our World Map away.

[Mardoc]

Mostly good...except we didn't need the road to connect the Riverside Incense.

Dang it!

I had wondered where the extra happy for Mainmast came from, too, just didn't make the connection.

Well, I'll figure out what those workers should do instead next turn. Hopefully tonight. Probably it's making workshops for Mizzenmast, or preimproving something else for the new incense city to be.

Possibly....but keeping the Galley away from his shore is a good play. We're not guaranteed to deprive him of knowledge of what direction we came from, but it's worth a shot.

Was essentially what I was thinking, yes. We can keep booking it north - I'm not sure if it's higher priority to try to find a port, or to stay out of sight.

A port may not even exist, yet - he's only got 5 cities, and without Fishing, has no reason to settle one. But if he does, it's big, it means we can interact in a friendly manner.

I think, all in all, this galley should try to stay out of sight, just aim for our own knowledge of the map layout and circumnavigation. We'll be back in the area frequently; we want to settle those islands, at a minimum, plus it won't be long until we want to start establishing a navy rather than just a ferry service (I'm thinking Frigates with Floating Eye/Fireball/Fair Winds mages onboard, or else with Cultists on board. Or both!).

That's one hell of a beeline. His Civics mean he can build Level 3 Firebows....thankfully he doesn't have many cities to build them from.

Yep. Would make a lot of sense in a crowded map, but not so much here. Still, remind me not to stop within three squares of his territory, not until we've established friendly relations.

And let's offer Open Borders to Tatan. It's a gesture of friendship plus we'll get a bit of extra commerce in Mainmast. He'll get a *lot* more out of the deal than we do once he techs to Sailing and Trade but I think it's worth it even if only for the diplo points.

Under no circumstances should we trade our World Map away.

Yes, we should try to be friendly. He's our best chance for a friend - all the way across the donut, not interested in the oceans apparently. There's really no reason for us to be hostile anytime soon.

I was thinking of taking it one step further, actually - offer him some free resources (like, um, pigs and cows ).

Not much of a barrier, we can still continue to the South/East in hopes of Circumnavigation.

I kept drifting a little bit west, and a little more west; one more tile and surely there'll be a path south again. I guess we could backtrack and come back to the mainland, follow it around. Or we could just strike out SW, trying to meet the northern boat in the middle. We do very much want Circumnav, yes, the only question is the best way to get it. But yes, this is one primary reason to keep our world map confidential for the time being.

Techwise....after Iron Working, I like KotE (to get some Mage Guilds and a few Adepts up), Priesthood (Cultists....yummy), then either Nerve Stapling and Religious Law (order depends on the timing. We *really* want RL for Theo/Conquest before our GAs run out.)

Then hit the Node techs, Sorcery and Poisons.

After that....umm...dunno. Lots of tasty options, but we do need more war toys ASAP.

Ok, makes sense to me. Instead of teching for the sake of economy, we'll tech for building an army of awesomeness. We still have lots of room to boost the econ just by settling and growing cities, it's true, and those few econ techs that are left are minor in comparison.

We can always aim to have another GA, y'know . There are lots of great people scattered around the tech tree, plus Poopdeck should be coming into its own with Sanitation and the Shrine. I'm a little reluctant to leave Foreign Trade before at least our current cottages grow up. I suppose what's most likely, at the current rate (assuming Bone Palace) is to stay on our current course until the last turn of GA, swapping then. But at the moment I still want to mostly build settlers and workers, not military, and keep the GNP ridiculous to help.

Also....we have two settlers completing next turn.

I'd like to use one of them to settle the Inner Sea. We'll need to cash rush a Galley in the Copper/Corn city, but this would get us Pearls very quickly (and another offshore city). We'll definitely want one of our forward units to go with the settler for defence, but I think the play is worthwhile given our growth rates/happy caps.

Here, I disagree.

We're going to get Pearls anyway in the copper city, aren't we, as soon as we find a culture source? But at the moment we don't even know that inner sea islands exist. It might all be peninsulas like the one with the barb city on it, maybe meeting in the middle.

Plus, I don't see the rush. I bet we're the first civ to have an inner sea port; I'd like to explore a bit before rushing to settle. Have some idea on a dotmap and a cove-map. And established logistics, so we can defend if need be. The bronze city is already a bit of a stretch; we ought to fill in behind it a bit and let it grow before we rely on it for pushing even further out.

What *is* a rush, in my view? Claiming the outer sea, to the extent feasible - overseas routes and, with Iron Working imminent, quite strong cities in their own right. But everyone probably started on the outer sea like we did, and could take some of it if they chose. And...filling our wedge. I'd like to get to a point where we control the chokepoint citadels, honestly - which means cities for getting them inside culture and logistics suitable to hold them - which in turn means more growth. But I'd rather put the settlers into known good sites than blindly out into the fog.

We are definitely planning to have another batch, after all, soon - Mainmast in particular is about to hit its happy cap and have a LOT of food/production that should be dumped somewhere useful. We can't spend all our time on wonders, not with land this lush. And once we have the basics of military preparation in place, we want to go back to grabbing land. That's the easiest way to settle this dispute - just manufacture so many settlers and workers that we can grab everything we want. .

I'm thinking I'd rather use the current settlers to grab the incense site and one more outer sea island, and plan on the inner sea grab with the next batch of settlers. Although the next coastal site north is also very tempting...

[Mardoc]

Also, a semi-crazy thought: likely it'll be possible to bring Basium in under human control, presuming T-Hawk works through the technical difficulties we're experiencing in 18. I can't find any sign that we banned him, and we can certainly make it to Fanaticism before anyone else if we push for it.

Granted, that tech rate penalty would hurt - but we're well ahead in GNP and look to be staying that way. And it would certainly be handy to have a Agg/Raiders ally along for the ride, not to mention to have Flying, decent Tier 4 units to play with instead of the Lanun junk.

Any interest?

[Thoth]

Dang it!

Well, I'll figure out what those workers should do instead next turn. Hopefully tonight. Probably it's making workshops for Mizzenmast, or preimproving something else for the new incense city to be.

Lumbermilling the forest to the north of the Incense tile?

Was essentially what I was thinking, yes. We can keep booking it north - I'm not sure if it's higher priority to try to find a port, or to stay out of sight.

A port may not even exist, yet - he's only got 5 cities, and without Fishing, has no reason to settle one. But if he does, it's big, it means we can interact in a friendly manner.

Given the lack of Fishing and Sailing and that the Lanun are in the game, probably no ports. I'd say try to keep the galley out of sight and head north and west.

I think, all in all, this galley should try to stay out of sight, just aim for our own knowledge of the map layout and circumnavigation. We'll be back in the area frequently; we want to settle those islands, at a minimum, plus it won't be long until we want to start establishing a navy rather than just a ferry service (I'm thinking Frigates with Floating Eye/Fireball/Fair Winds mages onboard, or else with Cultists on board. Or both!).

Mostly agreed, but Declared Nationality Pirates will be a more hammer effective fleet than Frigates (double check these figures...costs have probably changed in the mod ). Frigates are 100h for 3 base moves, 1 cargo and 10 strength. Pirates are 67 hammers for 4 base moves, 1 cargo, 8 strength and 25% retreat chance. Add Flanking 1 & 2 + the Fair Winds retreat bonus and we're looking at a 90% retreat chance.

As far as unit transport goes....with Theo/Conquest/Naval Yards we can build 3 promo Galleys....flanking 1, Nav1 and Nav2 + Longshoreman = 7 moves. +1 for Fair Winds. Plus possibly another +1 for Circumnav. And three units capacity. For 33 hammers.

Tatan isn't very far away with that kind of mobility.

Yes, we should try to be friendly. He's our best chance for a friend - all the way across the donut, not interested in the oceans apparently. There's really no reason for us to be hostile anytime soon.

Unless of course we see (or create) an opportunity for an invasion.

I was thinking of taking it one step further, actually - offer him some free resources (like, um, pigs and cows ).

Yeah, a resource gift followed by an OB offer would telegraph friendly intentions.

I kept drifting a little bit west, and a little more west; one more tile and surely there'll be a path south again. I guess we could backtrack and come back to the mainland, follow it around. Or we could just strike out SW, trying to meet the northern boat in the middle. We do very much want Circumnav, yes, the only question is the best way to get it. But yes, this is one primary reason to keep our world map confidential for the time being.

Looked at the Screenshot again....now I see the Ocean.

In that case....Northern boat heads north and East, South boat heads South and West....and our new boat scouts out close in Islands. We might consider another boat to head East along the coast.

Ok, makes sense to me. Instead of teching for the sake of economy, we'll tech for building an army of awesomeness.

Err, yes. That is the point of teching isn't it? The econ techs are a necessary evil on the way to the war techs.

We still have lots of room to boost the econ just by settling and growing cities, it's true, and those few econ techs that are left are minor in comparison.

Yeah, we've still got plenty of upside coming to us on the economy front with city growth, markets, Org Courthouses ect.

We can always aim to have another GA, y'know . There are lots of great people scattered around the tech tree, plus Poopdeck should be coming into its own with Sanitation and the Shrine. I'm a little reluctant to leave Foreign Trade before at least our current cottages grow up. I suppose what's most likely, at the current rate (assuming Bone Palace) is to stay on our current course until the last turn of GA, swapping then. But at the moment I still want to mostly build settlers and workers, not military, and keep the GNP ridiculous to help.

Oh yes. With the number of cities we have (and will have) GA's will be our best use of post Shrine Great People.

I take it you haven't checked the growth state of our 20 cottages (Villages actually ) recently. Another 7/8 turns and they'll pretty much all be Towns. We're a few turns away from Religious Law yet anyway, so by the time we can swap most (all?) of our cottages will be Towns.

Here, I disagree.

We're going to get Pearls anyway in the copper city, aren't we, as soon as we find a culture source? But at the moment we don't even know that inner sea islands exist. It might all be peninsulas like the one with the barb city on it, maybe meeting in the middle.

Plus, I don't see the rush. I bet we're the first civ to have an inner sea port; I'd like to explore a bit before rushing to settle. Have some idea on a dotmap and a cove-map. And established logistics, so we can defend if need be. The bronze city is already a bit of a stretch; we ought to fill in behind it a bit and let it grow before we rely on it for pushing even further out.

It's a question of time. We're 3ish turns away from a missionary + travel time (5-6 turns)+ 5 turns to pop borders if we spread OO (instant if we burn the Missionary on a Culture Bomb). That's a lot of time we could be working two extra tiles in Mainmast (plus our other Coastal cities which are hitting their happy caps).

And it gives us 1st dibs on whatever possible goodies are in the centre of the map. Plus a head start on control of a strategic chunk of geography. I'd rather have a suboptimal city right now than a perfect city later. And we're the Lanun....there are no bad coastal sites for us.

What *is* a rush, in my view? Claiming the outer sea, to the extent feasible - overseas routes and, with Iron Working imminent, quite strong cities in their own right. But everyone probably started on the outer sea like we did, and could take some of it if they chose. And...filling our wedge. I'd like to get to a point where we control the chokepoint citadels, honestly - which means cities for getting them inside culture and logistics suitable to hold them - which in turn means more growth. But I'd rather put the settlers into known good sites than blindly out into the fog.

Yeah, we want more cities....but we also want more military (from Hold (once we rush the Command Post), Winch (slow building Swords) and Bilge. Plus vertical growth in Mainmast (we need more happy for this). I'd really like to turn Mainmast into an uber city while our other cities take care of military and expansion. Use that food and hammers for infra in the capital and war toys/workers/settlers from our other cities.

We are definitely planning to have another batch, after all, soon - Mainmast in particular is about to hit its happy cap and have a LOT of food/production that should be dumped somewhere useful. We can't spend all our time on wonders, not with land this lush. And once we have the basics of military preparation in place, we want to go back to grabbing land. That's the easiest way to settle this dispute - just manufacture so many settlers and workers that we can grab everything we want. .

Post IW Mizzenmast and Topsail will be awesome settler pumps and that isn't very far away. But those settlers are going to need military muscle to back them up.

I'm thinking I'd rather use the current settlers to grab the incense site and one more outer sea island, and plan on the inner sea grab with the next batch of settlers. Although the next coastal site north is also very tempting...

We'll want those sites for sure....I like the Incense site as one of our next sites, the Clams are already in our culture and just need a WB from Mizzenmast plus the coast tiles and Incense.

But I'd really like those Pearls online ASAP even if it means a somewhat suboptimal city. (We could of course tech Drama before Smelting/IW and build Culture (which won't be affected by the -45% culture penalty we're about to take when we swap to City States/Mil State). It would also let us 1t pop the borders in Winch and Bilge.....which isn't a horrible thought. and it would get us access to a 70ish hammer Theatre for Mainmast (worth +2 happy with Dyes and Consumption....) )

Also, a semi-crazy thought: likely it'll be possible to bring Basium in under human control, presuming T-Hawk works through the technical difficulties we're experiencing in 18. I can't find any sign that we banned him, and we can certainly make it to Fanaticism before anyone else if we push for it.

Granted, that tech rate penalty would hurt - but we're well ahead in GNP and look to be staying that way. And it would certainly be handy to have a Agg/Raiders ally along for the ride, not to mention to have Flying, decent Tier 4 units to play with instead of the Lanun junk.

Any interest?

That's a very interesting idea. Need to give it some thought and work out the details of which city builds the Gate, but I'm not opposed.

[Mardoc]

Well, another day, another save arriving after I've gone to bed .

Word from Thoth is, despite offering Tatan free fish and open borders in separate agreements, Tatan decided he isn't having any of that. He declared war on us .

Well...I'd already been contemplating, jokingly, a PYFT-war to get the save arriving in the start of my window instead of just after it. And Thoth did just finished mentioning that Tatan realy isn't that far away from us, measured in turns instead of tiles

Tatan just blew any foreign trade bonus out of the water, so...the reasons to play nice with him are? Um. Resource trades - we can give him stuff, and he can't give us anything. Mana trades? Ok, that could be worth something, perhaps, although we've already claimed a lot of mana nodes and have a plan in place for insta-mage generation. Not being at war with the whole world? Well, that was the primary reason. Only it works a little better when the other party demonstrates that they're interested.

So...I figure we might as well take Tatan up on this offer . We can't kill him now, especially when he has firebows and we don't (and we're running a paper thin military, even if it is #1 in the world). But it shouldn't be long now. Plus...even if we can't kill him, if we can force a worldspell out of him *now*, that'll make life much easier going forward.

What exactly should our goals be?

• Just keeping him away from our core?
  
• Harassment, maybe a world spell burned?
  
• Conquest?
  
• Conquest + a wedge for the Mercurians to call home?
  

[Mardoc]

[SIZE="4"]T100:[/SIZE]

Starts off well, with this:


We've now got darn near all the econ tech Going to pick up Drama real quick in order to tempt the RNG to start spreading OO again (that is, I bet most cities will get their free spread just after we build culture to pop their borders). With the number of happiness resources we've accumulated, new cities start with a happy cap of 14, and first ring just doesn't cut it anymore.

After that, we'll go for Smelting and Iron Working, then probably go pick up the magic techs, Mind Stapling, and Priesthood.

Have a bit of an annoying turn in the circumnavigation front, though - run into a roadblock in the south, and a hostile griffon in the north. We may need to launch another ship or two to try alternate routes. I think the southern boat will keep heading west, perhaps if I can run into the donut again I can at least get circum in one direction. But I could be talked into admitting defeat and backtracking, to follow the donut around to the southeast.





Meanwhile, other explorers have found such wonders as wheat, and yet more tasty looking islands:


We're also planning to settle the inland sea shortly - the copper city will go down, whip a galley, and immediately load a settler for what we think is an island there. And the incense site to the south will settle next turn, primarily because it's easy - already has improved tiles and a work boat being produced nearby.

Demos...are quite nice looking.


We're putting almost as much GNP into cash rushing as most civs have, total. And still are outresearching the others by a goodly clip. Our production lead is also pretty nice, and doesn't include the cash rushing. Soon we'll boost it by a lot, by adding in Shipyards to half our cities.

In crop yield, we no longer have quite the advantage we used to. This is probably primarily due to our pause in our mad settling spree for the wonders; hopefully we can pull further ahead now that we're opening the settler spigot again.

And of course, Soldiers is currently a signal that the world is farmer's gambitting. Now that people are starting to mutter about dogpiles, we're going to be investing some serious resources into military, probably 2-3 cities worth of production. After we get our Command Posts built there, of course.

Here's our current cities overview:


Wonders - we've just built the Bone Palace for another dozenish turns of Golden Age. Heroic Epic is done, National Epic is due soon, and Heron Throne is about three turns out. We don't have any more planned at the moment. It would certainly be nice to pick up the Guild of Hammers, say. Maybe we could give our Heron Throne city the Tower of Complacency and the City of a 1000 slums .

Finally, a look at our 'military', along with the known world and current settler locations. You can see - for all that we've expanded very very quickly, we've still only settled about 40% of our ring segment, and just a handful of the oceans. Of course we're still working hard to change that, but it makes near term military action seem kinda silly. Main goal at the moment is to keep our Power high enough that no one tries anything destructive.

So...on the Tatan front...I think we'll ignore him for a while yet. Granted, our cities will be able to add settlers/workers/military fast enough for perhaps a city every couple turns, for the foreseeable future (and better once the island cities have their infra in place and their growth done). But it will still take a long time to expand to the point where we can justify conquest.

That is, our current goal is self-defense, aided by the sea. We will escalate, of course, the longer he stays at war with us, and the more resources we can afford to divert .

[Thoth]

Well, another day, another save arriving after I've gone to bed .

Word from Thoth is, despite offering Tatan free fish and open borders in separate agreements, Tatan decided he isn't having any of that. He declared war on us .

Well...I'd already been contemplating, jokingly, a PYFT-war to get the save arriving in the start of my window instead of just after it. And Thoth did just finished mentioning that Tatan realy isn't that far away from us, measured in turns instead of tiles

Tatan just blew any foreign trade bonus out of the water, so...the reasons to play nice with him are? Um. Resource trades - we can give him stuff, and he can't give us anything. Mana trades? Ok, that could be worth something, perhaps, although we've already claimed a lot of mana nodes and have a plan in place for insta-mage generation. Not being at war with the whole world? Well, that was the primary reason. Only it works a little better when the other party demonstrates that they're interested.

I've been scratching my head over the war dec all day.

1) He may have accepted OB and then realized he wasn't gaining any benifit but failed to account for the downstream boost once he techs Fishing/Sailing (which may not be in his plans?)

2) He has contact with a third (or even fourth party) and wants them to think we DOWed him. The hypothetical 3rd/4th parties wouldn't see the "Tatan has DOWed Mardoc" in their event logs, but if they are paying attention to the F4 mouseovers on the Relations tab they'd see we are at war (I think, not sure if that happens in MP games, but I've seen it in SP games I think)

3) Some other reason that I can't currently fathom.

Guess we'll have to wait until the game is over to find out for certain.

So...I figure we might as well take Tatan up on this offer . We can't kill him now, especially when he has firebows and we don't (and we're running a paper thin military, even if it is #1 in the world). But it shouldn't be long now. Plus...even if we can't kill him, if we can force a worldspell out of him *now*, that'll make life much easier going forward.

What exactly should our goals be?

• Just keeping him away from our core?
  
• Harassment, maybe a world spell burned?
  
• Conquest?
  
• Conquest + a wedge for the Mercurians to call home?
  

Conquest eventually if we can do it. He still lacks Fishing and Sailing (and possibly a port) before he can do anything other than Fireball boats that end turn too close to his shores.

In the meantime:

We'll be able to cash rush the CP in Hold on t101 along with the next workboat in Keel (we should do both ). Hold will be working a bare grass tile for two turns until we get the border pop, don't sweat it. After the CP, we build 6 Horsemen (should be 1t each) finishing the last one eot 107.

Assuming we take Drama as our next tech (and I think we should) Winch and Bilge should build Culture for 1t to pop their borders....conveniently enough we have a pair of workers who can move onto Winch's Deer to start the camp immediately.

Our new Copper/Pearl city gets founded t101 and works copper for two turns while building Culture, then gets a WB rushed to net Pearls.

Tiller, Mizzenmast and Topsail all have workers queued. Once the current crop completes, Mizzen and Topsail go back to Settler production.

Tiller builds Command Post, Archery Range and a Mage guild. If my math is correct we should be able to build an Archer/Adept every two turns from this city.

Our Island cities continue with WBs, lighthouses and NYs. We'll want a workboat from each of Keel, Jib Boom and Ballast to build the Coves for Ballast ASAP (assuming we get HT in Ballast (which will complete eot 102 with the chop/mine due on t101) we'll pop borders here eot 104 and will be wanting to work 3 coves asap. I think the fastest we can do it is t105 but that's ok.

We'll have Drama (eot 100), Smelting eot 102, IW eot 104. Turn 105 Mizzen, Topsail and Tiller all swap to NYs. turn 106 we should be able to cash rush the NYs in Mizzen (9 coast tiles) and Topsail (5 coast tiles). It'll be a turn or two after that for Tiller, but Tiller will have some solid base hammers anyway. We'll want a NY in Mainmast, but it can be slow built in 4 turns so no need to rush it.

Our other Island cities will want Lighthouses (to GROW!!!) and then NYs/Sea Havens.

After IW, Kote is 1t, Priesthood either 1 or two depending on beaker overflow and growth. Then I think we want Religious Law next. We'll be close to the end of our GA and the sooner we're in Conquest/Theocracy the happier I'll be. Swapping into Overcouncil at the same time is also worth considering: We'll get a 10% reduction on distance and # of cities maint (which will help cover the loss of City States), +10% beaker boost (which is nice) and the ability to draft 6 units per turn in an emergency.

We'll also want to shoehorn in Guybush and the Shrine of the Champion ASAP after IW. With the Shrine and 8 xp from Civics/CPs we can field 4 promo units from Hold. Me likey very much.

After RL....Mind Stapling. We *really* want Saverous. Two of our opponents have Fire based militaries (Uberfish and his Pyre Zombies, and Tatan with his Firballs).

Saverous is a Demon and so has innate 20% fire resistance. Post SoC we can build him with 4 promos (Mob 1 + C3). Thanks to the mod's changes to passive xp, it won't take long for him to get to 13 xp (Magic Resistance) and 20 xp (fire resistance) for a total of 95% resistance to fire. Note that Fireballs have a base st of 0 and +4 Fire st. Guess what happens when you try to Fireball a unit with 95% Fire resistance?