[SPOILERS] They're cOMing to taKe mE AWAy! Haha! Hoho.

[Whosit]

Perhaps one way to rank your priorities is to figure out which, if any, support or enable other priorities? For example, perhaps you'd rank building coastal cities above a large navy because then you have more cities to build boats.

On the other hand... you might want that large navy first to defend the coastal cities.

Never mind! This is hard!

[Mardoc]

Well, the turn moved pretty quick, we're up to T100 already. Wouldn't be shocked to get a bunch of turns in this weekend .

Some interesting diplo:

Sounds of celebration and good cheer can be heard from every quarter of New Evermore.

At long last, the Ljosalfar have thrown off the yoke of Mistform oppression.

Now, our eyes turn westward. In two turn's time, we will place a settlement not far to the east of the giant sanctuary. And we should have another city built in that area not long after.

How are the trade route prospects looking on your end?

Huzzah!

We have invented maps, and ships, and will soon set forth on glorious exploration voyages. We have offered to trade maps with your sages, in hopes that this reveals an easier pathway. The only alternative we see for the near future is a combined river and road pathway past the giants, but the Balseraph military cannot undertake such an endeavor in the near future.

The Calabim discovery of the Overlords suggests to our military staff that the vampires may intend a naval war against us before they fight overland against your people. It also suggests that the islands may contain a greater bounty than they gave us to understand. What are your thoughts?

- Barnum

@Whosit: Glad to know someone else is reading along .

The real problem is, no matter what I do, Ellimist will have more hammers than me. Just can't compete with Governor's Manors. This can be dealt with pretty much only one way: magic. Fortunately, that's the route I'm taking . I need to have Floating Eyes, collateral, and ideally summons, in range of the enemy. This is why I've been emphasizing adept production fairly seriously - boats are cheap, but the mages to stack on board aren't. I'm probably not focused enough on expansion, but I've been wanting to hit my happy caps! Still, my workers are caught up and maybe even a little ahead, so I should plan a couple more mainland settlements soon.

This turn we finished Writing and moved on to Trade. Our event fund will go down to about 50, but I think that's worth the risk to have our trade routes a turn sooner. After that, save for probably 2 turns, and then...I think Philosophy will have to come before Hunting. Then I'm thinking Sanitation, and move onto the mana techs and sorcery.

At home, not much exciting is going on, but you can have some overview pictures anyway since it's T100:







Away, Ellimist is exploring another dungeon, this time on the far side of a bay. Can't reach him in three turns...grr!



Well, let's go ahead and clean out this lizardman camp, and explore it, so that he can't. And also so we don't have to worry about lizards, of course.



Hmm...last time I saw this popup, it was good for the empire...


Oooooh! This guy's definitely getting some mage robes!


I think I'll have my swords do a bit more of this sort of thing .

Also, I do have some exploration to report. The west is a real headache to dotmap, especially by the mana. The only way to get the fish requires mana be third ring, I think. I'd be really happy if Q can see a better way.


Ok, Merovech, so far you haven't made many mistakes, but surely these coastal forests are a bit of an oopsie?




Also, after this game finishes, I'd really like to try out the map as the Lanun. Think you can post it in the lurker thread?

In the east, dotmapping is a bit easier. Although I'll certainly welcome input






Finally the demos:




Adept count:

2XP: 1
3XP: 2
5XP: 1

(+ 1 Adventurer, soon)

[Qgqqqqq]

Awesome! (Is there something about the order adventurers pop? Because I'm sure I've met kimble before...)
I've got nothing better in the west, unless you can find something to the south that makes one on the plains acceptable.

Do you think hidingkneels honestly close to the centre?
Because that must be a big stretch if so.
Thinking about it, thus is probably a coastal enough game to warrant OO without goodies on the islands.

[Mardoc]

Awesome! (Is there something about the order adventurers pop? Because I'm sure I've met kimble before...)
I've got nothing better in the west, unless you can find something to the south that makes one on the plains acceptable.

Come to think, there may be seafood to the south, as well. Going to send our 3rd ship this way to scout, if we haven't gotten hunters onto the bears yet. Want a coastal connection to Molach once we find him, I'm sure.

Do you think hidingkneels honestly close to the centre?
Because that must be a big stretch if so.

Well, he did trade maps with us - I think the Giant area isn't exactly center on looking at them. Let me know if there's anywhere in particular you want to see.

Barnum,

Thank you for sharing your maps with us. We will be sure to peruse them carefully.

It may be some time before a sea route can be charted. The land route may be quicker, depending on how fast we are able to expand in that direction.

As for the Calabim, it's hard to say what they intend. Their pledge of service to the Overlords was an unexpected development for us. They surely see you as their primary threat, but you are at such a distance that attacks either by land or by sea seem infeasible for the near future. I think it is more likely that they will attempt conquest either of us or the Sidar first. But for the moment, they seem content to run a small military, barely larger than our own.

HK,

If, perhaps, you could make a road to the headwaters 11 tiles west of Solace, this would enable our trade. The circus does intend to continue settling in your direction, but it appears to be a long time before borders may meet.

A road could serve more than one purpose, as it will surely be impossible for the circus to assist your people against potential vampires without a route. As this is not an immediate problem, we have time to consider a better way.

Had a T101 already - and it's early enough in the day that I've hope for a T102 today as well. Nothing too terribly exciting, except it appears the settler will be done further ahead of the galley than I thought. Probably Apprenticeship threw off my calculations. I might send it eastward to be a land city and have Ringmaster go straight to another settler.

I think the next city to be worth founding is the marked spot to the east of Elephant Show, with the clams. Green and food heavy and my workers are already close.

One very nice thing. Not quite enough to get us Trade before ending turn, but I think it speeds us enough that I'll be able to pick up Hunting before the revolution. 1 turn saving, 3 turns spending, ought to get us both Hunting and Philo, and there are 4 turns before we can revolt again.

Thinking about it, thus is probably a coastal enough game to warrant OO without goodies on the islands.

Oh, possibly, possibly. Certainly would have been a good Lanun map, I see why they were banned. And it looks like we'll definitely have to go at least to Smelting.

Do you think we should consider joining Elli in OO? Hemah would be handy, but I don't think we need Tsunami - Maelstrom ought to be good enough. I'm leaning no on this one too.


Adept count:

2XP: 2
3XP: 2
6XP: 1
+ Kimble, not yet promoted adept.

Yeah, Sorcery will pay off as soon as we can get there, it seems!

[Mardoc]

Just one turn of low event fund, then I'll rebuild it. Nothing ever happens on just one turn.




Ah, well. At least this RNG is being nice to me:

[Merovech]

Yep, those are mistakes. Interesting series of events/lair pops, there.

And yep, map is in the lurker thread.

[Mardoc]

Interesting series of events/lair pops, there.

Yeah, the frustrating part is that the Oghma event meant I didn't even have to burn my event fund. But I did anyway, because I didn't think.

With Philo right around the corner, that would have been a great time to have a (mostly) free engineer.

Ah well. Still got some very nice things in the past couple turns, even if not as much as was possible.

Onward!

And yep, map is in the lurker thread.

[Qgqqqqq]

Ouch

Tsunami>>>Ring of Flames, so it depends why you want it. We'd definitely get Hemah first, and there's no way , they'd get ToC, but I'm not sure if that's worth more than say, slavery under StW.

[Mardoc]

I think the real problem with going OO is we'd need to also go Priesthood, and spend a lot of hammers. Nah, best to stick with the arcane path for the moment.

Speaking of which - don't play turns when you're frustrated. Decided to take a shot at this goblin to train up the adept, didn't even promote him CI first.

We won - but in retrospect that was extremely foolish. Ought to have promoted, and possibly also hit the goblin with a puppet. Potent adepts don't need to take this sort of risk.


Still, a nice bonus, eh?

As I, ahem, clearly intended all along , moving the settler to the end of the peninsula will look quite professional. As the galley moves up adjacent next turn, the settler loads, with no wasted time whatsoever. So yeah, island ho!



In other adept news: holy cow, Adventurers must be worth only 1 hammer for upgrade calcs. That's a full turn of tech!
Uh...we'll be delaying this upgrade for a while yet. Not much point until we've at least got a mana tech, and possibly also Sorcery, right?



Demos looks fairly passable, with one thing of note: our Power lead is much less than it was.



Sure enough, it's Ellimist. Need to decide if we really think he's coming for us, like we've been trying to persuade HK. Or if he'll be going after HK or Molach. The thing is, he can't honestly expect to keep anything he conquers, distances are just too big. If he's bothering just to raze something...well, that'd be us, wouldn't it?

Of course, he could just be building up to take a barb city But I think we'd best prepare a bit here, anyway.


Preparation...is pretty much to do what we've been doing. We've got to kill his units with a good hammer exchange, if he comes - otherwise he can just send in another wave, and another, and beat us that way. Which means building adepts and moving quickly toward sorcery. I'm debating Necromancy vs Elementalism: Fireballs are better than Spectres, especially for naval combat, but Skeletons are much better than Smoke, so it depends on our mage training progress.

I think, also, instead of sending the galley home or toward HK, after it establishes our colony I'll look to see if there's a path to Elli or not. And set out the galley as an early warning beacon, until we can get a Floating Eye adept to do that instead. Hopefully we find it's impassible by coasthuggers, so we can send an expeditionary force to help either Molach or HK.

Ideally, if he can and does come, we want to kill by a naval ambush. Spectres vs landed troops could be a decent hammer exchange, I guess, but much better would be a Floating Eye to preposition, followed by Maelstrom/Maelstrom/fireball/GlugGlugGlug . But I can't see doing that with anything less than 3 naval mages. And we currently have exactly zero.

So if the galley runs into something currently en route - we go Necro and start stacking up skeletons. If the galley finds that it's totally impassible - we go Necro and send out skeleton explorers. But if he can come, but takes time to build up - then we want Elementalism. And ideally Sorcery early enough to get some Floating Eye scouts.

Also, a metagame thing, that he won't even object to: I need to get the 29 map done and to them. So that he has to split his attention

Meanwhile, we can't go all-in on military, or he beats us that way too. Ringmaster is on to another settler; I think he's got to go east. I want to claim the mana, but we've got to get the Bears under control first. But I'm sure there's mana in ex-Selrahcia. Plus, well, if I get enough mages on the board, having only the one node won't hurt us any, which argues for hammer cities.

Next turn we ought to be able to research Philo; the turn after is another revolt (this time including Nationhood!). Then save gold. I think Sanitation has to be next, losing Agrarianism will hurt. After that, straight to the mana techs and sorcery. I'm debating the right time for Sorcery. On the one hand, each additional mana tech we get, drops the cost by adding a prereq bonus: 276 beakers saved for the 2nd, 216 for the 3rd, 160 for the fourth. On the other hand, we really really could use some Floating Eyes and true military magic-users, rather than dabblers.

We have a high-odds Sage due from Ringmaster in about 10-12 turns. We could speed that up and improve the odds, by running a Sage. And a Great Sage would half-bulb Sorcery; I think it'd be worth about 1100 beakers to us (1000 + 2/pop on Quick). Bulb order is slightly altered in EitB, to put Sorcery ahead of the mana techs, which makes it the top of the unlocked list. Sorcery's...2311 beakers, so it's still a hike after we bulb. But, if it's an emergency, we can do that.

So the tradeoff would be, speed Sorcery by about 8 turns, at the cost of making our next GA harder. I think it's definitely worth running the Sage to give ourselves the option, and otherwise wait and see. Depends on what the galley sees, honestly; I'm not sure how much of a hurry I should be in to Sorcery. Still, we've already 2 promotable adepts, and the others are moving up at a good clip. It's mainly a question of whether we spend the Great People on military beakers, or on a further economic growth GA.

Adept count:
4XP: 2
5XP: 1
8XP: 2

+ Kimble@3XP

[Mardoc]

And, squeaking in right before bed, it's T104.

Ellimist is out of GA. We're now comfortably ahead in GNP, although still significantly behind in MFG.


\

Not only was Philo a 1-turn deal, we only needed to run 30% science. So we still have an event fund next turn. I'm learning .

Sanitation...grr. 739 beakers is a bunch. But it's a lot of food. But that's as expensive as a mana tech, all on its own. But our GNP has been improving steadily, and Foreign Trade + island city ought to give another hefty boost. I'm pretty sure it's still worth going to Sanitation. Pretty sure.

Definitely not worth a Masonry/Construction detour at the moment, though.

New adepts due soon. I'm sorta considering skipping Slavery, despite researching Philo, because it'll make the adepts start at 0XP again. But...Potent seems pretty darn good, good enough to make that a short delay. And Slavery might just be what we need to get competitive with Elli on the hammer front. I'm thinking extra hammers into adepts, means more adepts sooner, which counteracts starting them at 0XP.

All the adepts gained XP IBT, which is part of why I feel comfortable starting newbies off at ground zero .

Adept count:

5XP: 2
6XP: 1
9XP: 2

+Kimble@4XP