This Time for Sure: Mardoc reprises the Lanun

[Mardoc]

The big news of the turn: spending all our money in one spot:


We've also learned a bit via Hawks, discovering Uber's proximity, as well as yet more awesomely lush land:




And...the Guild did this to our demos:

Before:

After:

[Mardoc]

Haven't found the time to update much recently. We've got Mithril, and it's hooked. Also found prizes in the center, going to take some of them. Bananas and silk and gold, at least.

And...found something interesting in the middle of the ocean, only optic-accessible:

Maybe that was meant to be Nightmares and be a prize, but ran into the weirdness when you hand-place Hell? Maybe there's something else fun on this island...we'll find out next turn.

[Mardoc]

Oh, my. More, nice treasures in the middle:



We definitely need to increase our military, so we can keep them! These cities even come with workers and pre-improved tiles!

Also, I think it's clear this was intended as treasure, but WB-placed Hell doesn't work right. No Nightmare/Sheut Stone to make us Str 11/9 Chariots .



Ok, so Str. 9/7 is still very nice . As are Str 8 swords.

And, one last treasure:


In other news...Ballast is getting to be ridiculously awesome! I'm tempted to suggest the Pillar of Chains here, too, so that we can break 100 base hammers/turn...
[SIZE="1"]No, I don't know what I'd use 100 hpt for. 1-turning a bunch of Arcane Barges, maybe?[/SIZE]


Most of our mainland cities are finishing up vital infrastructure, and will be able to increase our Power even faster soon. Hoping to get all our Command Posts and Courthouses built in the next 20 turns, so we can go for a military trait next. Although given how far-flung our empire is getting, maybe we stick with Organized for the duration . We're at 21 cities this turn, after all, with 2 settlers in queue, and still no sign of running out of land. And we haven't even gone conquering yet!

[Thoth]

Oh, my. More, nice treasures in the middle:


We definitely need to increase our military, so we can keep them! These cities even come with workers and pre-improved tiles!

That looks tasty. I think Ahpeter would make a good spot for either the Summer or the Winter Palace.

We'll want some foot soldiers in the centre as well as our strikers. Some swords and archers moving this way would be a good thing.

Ok, so Str. 9/7 is still very nice . As are Str 8 swords.

Something I noticed last time I opened a save: We can't build swords atm and won't be able to until we have our 4 Phalanxes. So much for building 4 promo swords and upgrading the ones with good mutations.

Our HE city should be up to size in a couple of turns and then we can pump out 4 Phalanxes.

And, one last treasure:

We'll want to grab as many mana nodes as possible to take maximum advantage of that. We've got 4 in our borders right now with 3 more in our wedge of the donut and one or two more we can claim on the Islands. With 9 Nodes we can ensure a wide variety of free Level 1 spells for our adepts (2x Death, 1x Chaos, 1 x Air, 2x Body, 2x Meta) and convert nodes to ensure our mages get appropriate Level II spells before our mass upgrades.

In other news...Ballast is getting to be ridiculously awesome! I'm tempted to suggest the Pillar of Chains here, too, so that we can break 100 base hammers/turn...
[SIZE="1"]No, I don't know what I'd use 100 hpt for. 1-turning a bunch of Arcane Barges, maybe?[/SIZE]

Agreed with the Pillar.....100+ hammers per turn = very fast Towers and/or quick Wonder builds.

Most of our mainland cities are finishing up vital infrastructure, and will be able to increase our Power even faster soon. Hoping to get all our Command Posts and Courthouses built in the next 20 turns, so we can go for a military trait next. Although given how far-flung our empire is getting, maybe we stick with Organized for the duration . We're at 21 cities this turn, after all, with 2 settlers in queue, and still no sign of running out of land. And we haven't even gone conquering yet!

Agreed that we want to keep Org. It's currently saving us a little over 100gpt in Civic maintenance and that will grow over time as inflation grows and our pop grows. We're looking at ~150 gpt by the time we have the option to swap traits....and we already have a decent military trait in Charismatic.

[Mardoc]

That looks tasty. I think Ahpeter would make a good spot for either the Summer or the Winter Palace.

Good idea . It assumes success in expanding, but I don't see a reason not to expect success. I figure I'll build the Summer Palace, since we don't yet have a planned 2nd season Palace spot, might as well stick with the cheap one.

We'll want some foot soldiers in the centre as well as our strikers. Some swords and archers moving this way would be a good thing.

Have a couple heading this way; should probably add more to the list. It'll be an easier choice once we get more military built.

Something I noticed last time I opened a save: We can't build swords atm and won't be able to until we have our 4 Phalanxes. So much for building 4 promo swords and upgrading the ones with good mutations.

Our HE city should be up to size in a couple of turns and then we can pump out 4 Phalanxes.

We still should at least upgrade the one 20 XP sword we have. Just have to find him and get him to a Training Yard, I guess.

Agreed with the Pillar.....100+ hammers per turn = very fast Towers and/or quick Wonder builds.

Well, the other logical place for it would be Mainmast. It's already big, without a huge amount of hammers.

But I suppose it would be very nice to have the ability to win a Tower race without invading, yes.

Edit: A related question: do we bother to build the Tower of Complacency? I'm going to come down on the side of 'no', actually. With Fruit of Yggdrasil + sugar + silk, we're looking at a base happiness cap of something like 20. Before we take advantage of Consumption, Theocracy, or normal happiness buildings, which will easily let us hit a happy cap of 30ish. There's little chance we can find that much food in most cities.

The main benefit of Tower would be the ability to set up a drafting camp, but since the best we can draft are archers and swords, I'd rather just plan to hand-build them.

Agreed that we want to keep Org. It's currently saving us a little over 100gpt in Civic maintenance and that will grow over time as inflation grows and our pop grows. We're looking at ~150 gpt by the time we have the option to swap traits....and we already have a decent military trait in Charismatic.

Huh, I hadn't realized it was saving us that much directly. It's saving us a whole bunch with the cheap Courthouses, too. And of course just about every city needs a Lighthouse.

Plus, if we plan to keep it, then we don't have to skew our builds to make sure we have Command Posts built in time. It's a good plan.

I'm tempted to knock the tech slider down one more, to accumulate more cash for upgrades and shipyard rushes. But - maybe we just need to continue being aggressive about Courthouses and get that Summer Palace built.

[Mardoc]

We'll want to grab as many mana nodes as possible to take maximum advantage of that. We've got 4 in our borders right now with 3 more in our wedge of the donut and one or two more we can claim on the Islands. With 9 Nodes we can ensure a wide variety of free Level 1 spells for our adepts (2x Death, 1x Chaos, 1 x Air, 2x Body, 2x Meta) and convert nodes to ensure our mages get appropriate Level II spells before our mass upgrades.

Mostly agreed. I don't see the purpose in picking up a free Death promo, is all. Wouldn't we rather go for Entropy, or Sun, or maybe Life? (I really want Destroy Undead in our arsenal!) Or if we want summons, Fire or Law?

I'm not a huge fan of Skeletons and Spectres at this point.

[Thoth]

Good idea . It assumes success in expanding, but I don't see a reason not to expect success. I figure I'll build the Summer Palace, since we don't yet have a planned 2nd season Palace spot, might as well stick with the cheap one.

Winter Palace is boosted by Marble....so they're pretty close to being the same cost.

Have a couple heading this way; should probably add more to the list. It'll be an easier choice once we get more military built.

With our Island cities + a couple of mainland cities reaching their target sizes new war toys should be rolling off the line every turn now.

We still should at least upgrade the one 20 XP sword we have. Just have to find him and get him to a Training Yard, I guess.

We have two Swords with 20 exp....one in the north and one in the Canal Barb city.

I'd hold off on upgrading them until after we Mutate them. If they get good promos (Light, Blitz, Strong, Empower 1) then consider upgrading them. Otherwise....new Phalanxes from our HE/SoC city will have 4 promos available (only one less than our 20 xp Swords) plus they can get mutated and have an extra good promo available: Combat 1.

Well, the other logical place for it would be Mainmast. It's already big, without a huge amount of hammers.

But I suppose it would be very nice to have the ability to win a Tower race without invading, yes.

Mainmast was my original thinking for the Pillar, but Ballast won't take very long to surpass Mainmast in pop so I think it's the better choice.

Edit: A related question: do we bother to build the Tower of Complacency? I'm going to come down on the side of 'no', actually. With Fruit of Yggdrasil + sugar + silk, we're looking at a base happiness cap of something like 20. Before we take advantage of Consumption, Theocracy, or normal happiness buildings, which will easily let us hit a happy cap of 30ish. There's little chance we can find that much food in most cities.

I think we skip tower of complacency. It's 502 hammers and those hammers spent on regular happy buildings + the happies we have from religion/theo/resources/cha ect are more than enough for our needs.

The main benefit of Tower would be the ability to set up a drafting camp, but since the best we can draft are archers and swords, I'd rather just plan to hand-build them.

With Gunpowder we could draft Arquebusiers (for 3 pop) or with Bowyers we could draft Longbows (at 2 pop each). But our max growth rate is 1 pop per turn, so we'd effectively be limited to either 1 LB / 2 turns or 1 Arq/3 turns. And we'd have to avoid building military in that city in order to grow. I think we're better off just building the war toys we need.

Huh, I hadn't realized it was saving us that much directly.

Have a look at F2. Civics are costing ~83 gpt + 23% inflation (or rather they were last save I looked at, they're higher now). Double that without Org.

Plus, if we plan to keep it, then we don't have to skew our builds to make sure we have Command Posts built in time. It's a good plan.

We'll have most of our core CPs up and running by the time the switch happens, but this is the stage of the game where Org becomes the dominant econ trait even over old Fin. Costs will keep rising and Org helps keep them down. It isn't flashy and sexy like old Fin, but it's a sturdy old warhorse that never stops performing.

I'm tempted to knock the tech slider down one more, to accumulate more cash for upgrades and shipyard rushes. But - maybe we just need to continue being aggressive about Courthouses and get that Summer Palace built.

We've got most of our essential infra in place, I'd keep the slider at 70% until after Arcane Lore at the very least. The only city that doesn't have a Shipyard that would benifit from a cash rush is the Incense city, and it's growing into Mines and Workshops and can finish the SY on it's own in reasonable time.

Crow's Nest could *really* use a Courthouse btw (and it's only a 1 or 2 turn build).

[Thoth]

Mostly agreed. I don't see the purpose in picking up a free Death promo, is all. Wouldn't we rather go for Entropy, or Sun, or maybe Life? (I really want Destroy Undead in our arsenal!) Or if we want summons, Fire or Law?

I'm not a huge fan of Skeletons and Spectres at this point.

That configuration is only phase 1 of the Mana plan. It's the configuration we use while pushing out 40 or so Adepts (by the time we get those nodes settled and improved 40 Adepts will take around 4 t to do)

In Phase II, III and IV we dispel a bunch of those nodes and re-improve them in preparation for Mage upgrades.

Homework project: What configurations of 9 mana nodes gets us the best:

a) Stack damager Mages
b) the best Undead killing Mages
c) the best enemy stack de-buffer Mages
d) the best (temporary) Stack buffing Mages?

And how many of each do we want? (Extra points if you can account for the Adepts/Mages we'll want as "Node Mages" to reconfigure the Nodes and the Adepts/Mages we'll want as "Unit Buffers" with things like Enchantment 1 and 2, Nature II, Spirit 1, Chaos II, Law I)

Also consider the best node configuration for the turn we build Hemah (hint: 4 Enchantment and 2 water nodes are major win as a starting point)

[Mardoc]

That configuration is only phase 1 of the Mana plan. It's the configuration we use while pushing out 40 or so Adepts (by the time we get those nodes settled and improved 40 Adepts will take around 4 t to do)

In Phase II, III and IV we dispel a bunch of those nodes and re-improve them in preparation for Mage upgrades.

Homework project: What configurations of 9 mana nodes gets us the best:

a) Stack damager Mages
b) the best Undead killing Mages
c) the best enemy stack de-buffer Mages
d) the best (temporary) Stack buffing Mages?

And how many of each do we want? (Extra points if you can account for the Adepts/Mages we'll want as "Node Mages" to reconfigure the Nodes and the Adepts/Mages we'll want as "Unit Buffers" with things like Enchantment 1 and 2, Nature II, Spirit 1, Chaos II, Law I)

Also consider the best node configuration for the turn we build Hemah (hint: 4 Enchantment and 2 water nodes are major win as a starting point)

Ah...that makes more sense. I'll have to actually sit down with the manual to answer that, I think. I'll try during work tomorrow.

Plus, of course, we've got the 5 immediate promos to use on each Mage.

Anyway, I played the turn, took the Ygg city, scrambling in some reinforcements as we speak. Also arranging to settle the southern coast (for a node and a lake cove) and the northern furs/node spot. Forgot that you can't unload from a boat the same turn you load, which will delay us one turn in founding the southern city.

Nothing much new, except that not only do I think we'll 1-turn Sorcery, I think we'll have significant overflow to dump into Taxation .

I don't understand how our Power rating is so high, when it still feels like a skeleton military to me. But in any case, you're right, we've several cities just about ready to start pumping out military like there's no tomorrow. Which will make me feel a lot more comfortable. I also upgraded 3 horses to chariots this turn - the ones with 7 XP. I'll be a lot happier once we've got a solid reaction force of these guys, in addition to the ones being used.

[Mardoc]

Homework project: What configurations of 9 mana nodes gets us the best:
And how many of each do we want?

I'm going to start with the assumption that we want three stacks. One for each of Uber and Ilios, one reserve.

In general, if we can achieve the below, then we don't need much more variety, and each is limited to one spell/turn anyway...put the other promotions into Mobility and Combat.

Most of my formulae include 3 Earth - a stoneskin, Combat IV mage is pretty well protected against assassins, which means we don't have to fuss about trying to find Guardsmen.

a) Stack damager Mages

First thought: 2 Air, 3 Earth, 3 Fire. That gives us Maelstrom, Stoneskin, and Fireballs. Plan to knock them to minimum with Maelstrom, then use whatever remains on Fireballs to knock them lower. Earth is to protect against Assassins.

We want, oh, 4 per stack, so 12 total. Maelstrom will need 2-3 castings usually to redline a stack, so keep the fourth mage for just in case.

Second thought: summoners
3 Law, 3 Fire, 3 Earth. Stoneskin to protect them, a choice of either fireball or Host of Einherjar, depending on the target.

Alternately, we can mix in 3 Death and/or 3 Entropy in place of the Law and Fire. That lets us have skeletons for assassin bait, spectres for Fear, and pit beasts for when we'd rather have Unholy damage than Holy damage.

And, we want a few Fire/Death/Earth mages, in the hopes of turning them into Fire Elemental summoning Liches later on.

We want as many of these as we can build, really. You can never have too many summons. I suppose they compete with mainline units, Mithril Chariots and Phalanxes and such.

b) the best Undead killing Mages

3 Life, I'm actually not sure we need anything else. Let's go with 3 Earth, again, and put the last two in...Air, I guess. In case we need the extra range. Last node? Beats me. Build these guys while we have only 8 nodes, I guess.

Probably four total is enough. We need them badly against Uberfish, but current knowledge suggests we don't need them elsewhere.

c) the best enemy stack de-buffer Mages

3 Sun, 3 Entropy, 3 Earth. Blinding Light and Rust, with a side of Pit Beasts if there's a stack already debuffed.

4 per stack to double up on each spell, equals 12.

d) the best (temporary) Stack buffing Mages?

3 Body, 1 Chaos, 3 Shadow, 3 Earth, 2 Nature, 2 Meta. This is too many, so do them in 2 waves, one with Body/Chaos/Nature/Earth, one with Body/Shadow/Earth. And do the Body/Shadow/Earth ones first, see below for why.

We want 2 Body/stack/turn, 1 Chaos, 2 Shadow, 1 Nature - total of 6/stack, or 18 mages total.

(Extra points if you can account for the Adepts/Mages we'll want as "Node Mages" to reconfigure the Nodes and the Adepts/Mages we'll want as "Unit Buffers" with things like Enchantment 1 and 2, Nature II, Spirit 1, Chaos II, Law I)

Node Mages - Meta 3. Since that's all they need, they can be our perma-buffers, too, adding in a mixture of:

3 Spirit, 3 Nature, 3 Enchantment, 2 Chaos

Hmm...This overlaps the temp stack buffing pretty well - Meta/Nature/Chaos should probably go together, so that we can send those out to be Floating Eyes/Treetop defense/Dance of Blades guys if we don't have the Body/Chaos/Nature/Earth mages ready in time.

Frankly - I figure we want 9 of these guys, one per node. We also want to camp a lot of mages on the nodes as long as we're at peace, so that we can dispel and reform the nodes in a single turn.

We want them basically to be permanently camped on the nodes, so we can swap to whatever configuration we find useful at a moment's notice.

e) The best naval mages

2 Air, 2 Meta, rest whatever. Maybe 3 Fire. Maelstrom, Fair Winds, Floating Eye, maybe Fireball.
2-3/naval stack, maybe 6 total. Assuming we mix in Cultists, Maelstrom will be less important.

On reflection - these guys can come early. Naval logistics are more complicated anyway, they don't need as many nodes, and for that matter, these could do just as well as adepts if we use Cultists.

f) Terraforming mages:

Sun2 , Water1, Life2, Earth 3
It'd be nice to set up killing grounds and/or Flaming Sands barriers in a few spots, if we're on defense. And we definitely want the ability to destroy other players' barriers.

Probably 2/stack, or 6 total, plus more if we want barriers of our own.

Edit: Hang on, I'm not sure what I was thinking here. We get Spring on every mage anyway, thanks to the Palace + Necronomicon. We're building Blinding Light and Destroy Undead mages anyway; these can do double duty on scorching in peacetime and sanctifying while at war. Just add a couple more to those lists, remove this category. 4 Destroy Undead mages is probably a little light, anyway.

Also consider the best node configuration for the turn we build Hemah (hint: 4 Enchantment and 2 water nodes are major win as a starting point)

4 Enchantment, 2 water...and probably 3 Body, in case we want to move him outside a stack. Although 3 Chaos would be fun just for the LOLs


Oy...that list of Mages comes out at 60+ Mages, not including any summoners or Hemah. Or the bootstrapping to get our node mages in place. Suddenly I appreciate the Catacombs a LOT more Because divide that by 21 cities and it's 3/city, which sounds a lot more reasonable.

Here I was getting ready to argue that 40 adepts was overkill . And I'm now thinking we might not want to stop until we hit 80 or 100.

And...all things considered, I'm hoping to see Arcane Lacuna when the turn comes back around. If we're going to put this kind of investment into magic, we definitely need that WS out of the way. Now that we've built nodes, Tatan can cast it whenever.