Green as they come: Hiding Kneel plays the Ljosalfar [SPOILERS]

[Commodore]

Hrm. Well, prognosis long-term is grim, as I notice Kyan cheerfully enjoying a meteoric rise up the scoreboard while elfland is forced to archery, but short-term as long as it's just these two I think you'll be okay.

[Tasunke]

Good luck with the defense!

[HidingKneel]

Turn 38 is in. More diplomacy with Ellimist:



Not sure what his game is. But he hasn't declared war yet, or entered my territory. Maybe he's stalling to bring more troops up? In that case, why announce his presence? If he'd waited three turns, there's a possibility I would have been stuck in pacifism when he attacked. Of course, he couldn't know that. Maybe he's trying to get me to build a military I can't support? (If so, his plan seems to be working.)

Anyway, I've continued building warriors. Mysticism came in at EOT. If Ellimist doesn't make a move next turn, I might slip in a quick elder council in Evermore.

[HidingKneel]

New turn is in. I got the following from Ellimist by email (apparently he didn't get the reply to his diplomacy last turn)

If you sent me a message this turn, I didn't get it.

I'm not sure if you meant "gold" specifically when you said tribute. Neither of us even have the tech (currency) for gold trading.

The archers were on their way home to my territory, and I diverted them slightly for a visit. If you're not willing to even consider any long term deals with me, such as lending palace mana or religion spreads, then perhaps I will be declaring war. I can hire units from the nearest goblin fort if necessary.

He hasn't moved his archers. I replied with the following:



Of course, I don't really want to be helping the score leader. But I want to be fighting him even less. Anyways, the mana I can offer isn't actually that valuable, unless he's planning on teching sorcery.

In other news, I hit another bug: when the turn opened, it asked me if I wanted to switch to aristocracy. I selected "let's see the big picture" and swapped to God King and nationhood instead. No further issue (perhaps because I can't switch civics again for 10 turns).

So, what to do? Not sure if a war is coming or not. I decide to keep teching archery, in case Ellimist does decide to attack. But I also want to stop building warriors before the upkeep forces me to lower the science rate. I switch all three cities to building elder councils. Two of those I can get out quick, so they'll be (marginally) useful even if war does come (unlike, say, a settler).

Screenshot from EOT:

[HidingKneel]

Another turn in. Diplomacy with Ellimist:



I guess my message could have been interpreted as an offer of only one mana, though I'd say it was ambiguous. Now that he mentions it, stalling sounds like a pretty good idea. If he generates a reasonable counterproposal, I'll take him up on it. In the meanwhile, archery is getting closer and closer.

Finished an elder council in Evermore this turn. Think I'll start running a sage: if Evermore's not producing a settler or worker, it only needs to work one farm in order to sustain itself. Meanwhile I'll send some workers north to Hyll, and see if I can find a way to build some mines there. Switched production in Bruti back to a warrior, since there seems to be a barbarian heading that way.

Screenshot from EOT:

[HidingKneel]

Got some game mechanics questions:

1) How does the conversion of overflow hammers into gold work? Say
Evermore's pulling in 24 hammers per turn due to the God King multiplier. I build a warrior with 8 hammers of overflow. Then I finish the next warrior with 16 hammers of overflow. On the third warrior, I would have 24 hammers of overflow: does this mean that 16 carry over and I get 8 gold? Or is that adjusted down to remove the God-King bonus?

2) If I have hunting and mining, will a great prophet bulb WotE or WotF?

[Mardoc]

2) If I have hunting and mining, will a great prophet bulb WotE or WotF?

Way of the Earthmother. Unless you have Philosophy, in which case he'll bulb Priesthood instead.

[Commodore]

I don't know about the bulb, but the overflow hammers are halved first before anything else.

In general, aggressive as Elimist is seeming, he's also not really putting much pressure on you. This smells like more of his Charadon-style brinkmanship. I'd take a hard line or just kill those dang archers, he's already forced the diversion to Archery so might as well let him know you're out of the farmer's gambit and in war mode. He can kill everyone, but he cannot kill everyone at once. As long as he and Kyan aren't forming a collusion (which would be weird, but Kyan is Mr. Spin), Elimist has to work to keep everyone on their toes.

[HidingKneel]

Turn 41 is in. More diplomacy with Ellimist:



He also sent a more detailed message by email:

HidingKneel

Okay, I want to give you some background info so that my motivations aren't completely confusing to you. Feel free to believe or disbelieve any of this, but you can confirm a lot of it with the information you have available in game.

I was able to conquer yell0w because a good chunk of my worldspell units were near him. I hope it will help me out in the long run... but unfortunately it's a drag in the short run. If you check the culture graph, you can confirm that the great specialist I captured was a bard. The map is toroidal, which tends to increase maintenance, and the city is costing me 10 gpt even in aristocracy.

Right now, I see myself in the sort of position plako was in for pitboss 4. He got an early game advantage and everybody focused on him, while Parkin enjoyed a less obvious advance and ended up winning. Right now, Kyan has just as many(4) cities as me. His food is 51 to my 43. His GNP is 71 to my 56. My GNP number includes the +12 culture from the great bard that yell0w settled(nobody is gaining culture faster than me right now. Plus the best tiles at yell0w's capital are in the third ring.) The only player with a GNP even close to Kyan's is Weezel, and he's creative so it's inflated somewhat.

You may think that this sounds like I'm downplaying my position, or the typical "my land sucks" BS. My land doesn't suck. My land is just as good as everybody else's is and my current position is definitely very good. The problem is... Kyan's position is better and I don't have enough units near him to slow him down. He's financial while I get -10% to research and can never build libraries. He adopted aristocracy at the same time I adopted city states.

Your civ tends to expand vertically(better cities) while mine expands horizontally(more cities.) I don't know which of those strategies will work best in this game, but toroidal maintenance will definitely have an impact. If I use the typical Clan of Embers expansion strategy, the toroidal maintenance is going to force me back into city states(and Kyan will pull even further ahead.)

Truthfully, I'm not likely to invade you or choke you in the near term regardless of what you say, but I wanted you to see that I could have. I see no point in choking you because slowing you down isn't going to help me stop Kyan. If I do attack, it will be to capture your territory and will involve a stack of units from the local goblin fort. That will cost me a few hundred gold just to get started, and if all goes well I increase my maintenance bill even more. (See FFH-9 for an example of what goblin fort units can do vs elven archers + gilden. BTW I'm not sure wtf has been boosting your power rating from turn zero onward; it doesn't add up right to be the dwarves vs lizardman lair event. I'm tempted to invade just to solve the mystery.)

Anyway, I have some ideas for cooperation with you, but I don't want to share them unless you agree to keep things confidential between us.

I won't try to tell you that my position is bad. It's not.

I won't say that I'll put your interests ahead of my own. I won't.

What I will say, though, is that I can't beat Kyan on my own. He's pulling ahead of the pack in beakers and food with strong military units and a dangerous worldspell right around the corner.

Ellimist
aka Urag gro-Shub

My thoughts:

1) Sounds like you had his frame of mind just about right, Commodore.

2) Seems like Ellimist has sort of abandoned the "in-game diplomacy only" restriction with this message. Which is fine by me, but I'd like to run it by the tech thread before responding in kind.

3) Ellimist is trying to convince me I should be more worried about Kyan than him. I'm not buying it, though. Of course Rhoanna can tech faster than Jonas. The Clan has other advantages, like warrens and (in this game) tons of those friggin' goblin archers.

4) Not sure what Ellimist is going to propose. If it's something essentially cost-less for me, I'll probably go for it, even if it ends up helping him
(mana loans, recon from hawks, etcetera), so long as I get some commitment from him to leave me unmolested for a while. I'll even throw in an explanation of my inflated soldier count . No point in fighting a war to keep that secret.

5) Looks like Ellimist really doesn't want to fight me right now. He could probably muster the forces to kill me, but I'd bleed him. Still, I'd like him to withdraw those archers sooner rather than later, since they're blocking the road to the next city I want to settle.

So, based on that message, I continued drawing down the military buildup.
Evermore started working a sage specialist and producing a settler. Hyll will finish an elder council next turn, at which point I can pump out some workers. Bruti finished a warrior and grew a size. I kept the tech on archery, though. We're already more than halfway there, and the sooner we build Gilden, the more useful he'll be when we actually need him (even if that isn't for a while yet).

[HidingKneel]

Two more turns played. Nothing much happened during the first of those. Got an in-game message from Ellimist, but it was blank. Turn 43 contained another message, with the promise of more to follow:



Here was my in-game reply:



Initial thoughts: All that information about the relative positions of players is interesting. To summarize the most important part of that:

Ellimist is to my immediate north.
Neither Ellimist nor us has a border with Kyan.

This makes cooperation seem a little more attractive. Also, I like that he's now using the word "exchange" rather than "bribe".

So, the turn itself. On turn 42, a barbarian warrior entered our culture near Hyll. I killed it with Lizardslayer, earning him a third promotion, then moved another warrior to defend him (since he was adjacent to one of Ellimist's archers). On turn 43, I moved both of them back to Hyll. Also, a barbarian warrior moved near Bruti. I attacked out at 50% odds and killed it, netting our warrior a pair of promotions. There's another warrior due to arrive next turn, and I'll try the same thing.

Ellimist's archers started moving, relaxing his aggressive posture somewhat. He offered open borders, which I refused. But I sent him this message:

Urag go-Shub: the information you offer about the world around us was well-received by Queen Arendel. We would be pleased to find ways to cooperate, such as exchanging temples. Unfortunately, the ways of Cernunnos were lost during the age of ice, and we are some ways from rediscovering them.

As a gesture of good-will, we have renamed our city of Hyll to reinforce your deception.
We have denied your request for open borders for the moment. However, we will open our borders next turn provided that you assure us that the offer will be used only to pass your archers through the northern part of our culture.

Some overlap with the in-game message I sent, in case that doesn't get through. Renaming Hyll is exactly the kind of "cost-free" cooperation I'm happy to offer. So Hyll is now Eaca, which finished an elder council and started a worker this turn. Also, archery came in at EOT. I'm moving our supplies up north to build an archery range there. Any thoughts on where we should build Gilden?

Screenshot from EOT: