[SPOILERS] DaveV plays Furia: What, me worry?

[DaveV]

Turn 128 opens with a trade screen.



Big news in the log:



Conversation:

Good point about the AC being lowered when AV cities are razed. That part of the plan was left over from before he founded AV and I hadn't bothered to reconsider it. I don't think it ultimately changes the plan, though. Razing his most important cities and wonders will cause a huge swing in our favor.

Brian is sending a scout in your direction, it's currently 9 west from Very Thin Books.

I agree with you as far as cultists, and regret that Auric us unable to build any. I upgraded my first adepts to Mage this turn. Would it be possible to borrow Chaos mana from you in the near future?

I'm planning to run a golden age soon after the effects of Blight and the Deepening start to wane. Do you have plans for Revelry? It would be nice if we could coordinate somewhat and get some free promotions on the adepts we produce. Either way, we both need to start being careful about HK potentially attacking one of us.

Sorry this turn was so late.

Ellimist

So, your declaration of war on HK wasn't worth mentioning? Somehow, I'm just not getting those warm fuzzy close alliance vibes from you. After some thought, I have to say that the Deepening will do way more damage to your so-called allies than to the guy running StW. To answer your question, I've been waiting until after Blight to cast Revelry. If I have to wait for the Deepening to wear off as well, the game will probably be over before my cities recover.

I offered Chaos mana as a sign of good faith.

Is HK going to settle the island I had planned on settling myself?

Bad Horse,

I noticed your galley 2SE of Innsmouth. Assuming it contains a settler, and assuming it survived the turtle, I thought I should warn you that I'm two turns from settling a city on the point of land 2SE of your galley.

Furia the Totally Mad

Rosier is mapping out my east.




And the hunter in the north was lucky and was bounced to the southwest instead of the canyon to the due south.




My specialist city, such as it is:




The odds for a sage will improve slightly over the next three turns. Call it a coin flip.

[DaveV]

The turn 129 log shows a great sage for Ellimist.



Loki entered the barb city, but I think I'll keep moving northeast and make contact with Tholal instead of grabbing it.




More email histrionics:

Sorry for not telling you about the war declaration on HK. As you can see from the timestamp on my message, I got home and played my turn very late. All I did was kill a scouting HK chariot which I didn't want poking around my borders. This was actually rather convenient since I'm going to have to be at war with him anyway to march Assassins into his lands, and the timing of declaring war now is less suspicious than the alternatives.

I'm actually kind of surprised that you're reacting so strongly against The Deepening, when you were just a couple days ago upset that I delayed Blight. I realize that The Deepening is going to affect you, Brian, and Tholal, and I apologize for that, but I have to do something to slow HK down, and geographically there isn't anything else I can realistically accomplish in the short-term. I can delay The Deepening, but that will simply allow HK to leverage StW even more effectively, and really the sooner I can unleash it the better. At the moment, if Blight doesn't delay things, the earliest I can complete it is turn 134.

Basically... the Deepening is going to affect a certain percentage of the land tiles on the map. I estimate 50% will become Tundra and 25% will become ice. Those who are hit hardest by Blight(who don't have StW) are already going to to have some "excess" improved terrain in their cities due to population loss, so you'll be able to shift population around and ignore some of the frozen tiles. The food reduction will also have a smaller impact because you'll tend to abandon tiles with low food output first. HK on the other hand will lose much less population due to Blight, and the data I have suggests that several of his cities are extremely large, either at or near 20 population. He'll be forced to waste a proportionally higher amount of citizen productivity on less productive tiles, and the compounded food situation will hopefully cause him to actually lose a fair amount of population as a result. If he can deal with Blight alone, StW will carry him through without too much difficulty. If the Deepening comes late enough that Blight is not a factor, then StW will again be able to carry him through without losing too much population. But together, there is a much better scenario of him being significantly hindered. I haven't started it yet, but if you like I can also complete the ritual which summons barbarian frostlings, if you think that might be of value. That one at least won't affect you negatively at all.

I appreciate the offer of Chaos mana. Please trust me that I have absolutely zero interest in attacking you, and want to do nothing more than rein in HK in whatever way is possible. The fact is that we're stuck on a ridiculously huge map and he has the best traits for expansion, so we're going to have to take every advantage available to us to slow him down so that he doesn't win (or kill us) before we can put some sort of realistic military response together (which, at least in my case, not only has to be built but also marched across dozens of tiles).

Let me know if I can be of service in any way.

Ellimist

I'm sorry for growling at you, but it seems to me that you're working on your own agenda. My rationale for complaining about the Deepening: Blight is a one time thing; whip some cities and grow back. With the Deepening, the growing back part is going to be problematic. I expect the Deepening to deprive me of a lot of food (making the recovery from Blight slower or impossible), and a good bit of production and commerce. I anticipate being pretty much a non-factor during the 20-60 turns it takes for my tiles to thaw out. So you're going to be essentially on your own against HK during that time. It would also be a favorable time for him to attack me, since I do have a direct border with him.

Also, if Blight had happened ten turns ago, it would have had less impact on me because my cities weren't as large.

AV spread to another one of my cities at EoT, so we're one more spread (or one Beast) away from Blight.

I discovered KotE and am building a couple Mage Guilds. Once I have some Adepts on the board (many turns in the future, most likely), some Metamagic mana would be helpful for scouting out HK's lands.

I'm under no illusions of winning this game; I'm just trying to make HK work for his victory.

Dave

Setting up my large cities for courthouse whips:

[DaveV]

Turn 130. The moment that's caused Ellimist so much anguish has arrived.



Contact:



Tholal contacted me with a griffon, and sent me this message via PM:

Greetings Furia of the Balseraphs. It seems that at last our people have met!

We see Loki visiting a barbarian city by the name of Sludgehome. We are not sure of your intentions, so we wanted to make ours clear. We consider Sludgehome and the nearby city of Zbolub to be part of the Doviello domain. As I write, there are troops on the way to bring these rogue colonies into the fold. We hope that your are agreeable to this and that we have beneficial relations in the future.

-Mahala Tholal

Not very friendly...

Greetings and well met.

I see this game as being a de facto alliance of the world vs. HidingKneel, and he'll probably still come out on top. Given that situation, I have no objection to you taking the two barb cities, especially if it would expedite a trade connection between our two empires. I plan to build a city in the Plain Cow, Wheat, 5 Silk site in about 6 turns, and will work on building roads in your direction.

In fact, I'd be happy to convert either or both cities with Loki and gift them to you once your guys are in position to garrison them. Loki gives city visibility, so I know that Sludgehome is still three turns from growth and building an axeman with 26 turns to go.

I offered open borders and a map trade. Ellimist already traded me your map, but I'm not sure how up-to-date your maps are.

Let's keep communications open. I'd like to make HK work for his win.

Dave

Northern exploration:




Loki moved to expose some fogged tiles.




Civics:



Relations:



Tholal is giving trade routes to HK . I'll have to see if I can talk him out of that.

Graphs:

[Qgqqqqq]

Could you change Tholal's text colour? It's very difficult to see with the default background.

[DaveV]

Changed. It's hard to find colors that distinguish Illians from Doviello, which are very close in the game. Also very close to the turquoise background, unfortunately.

[DaveV]

Turn 131.

Open Borders and Map trade accepted.

I will take you up on the offer to convert the cities for me. My troops can be in Sludgehome in 2 turns and Zbolub soon after. My Workers are lagging a bit behind but we'll definitely work on establishing a trade connection on our end.

-Mahala Tholal

I wasn't clear on the timing, so I converted Sludgehome and offered it to you. I don't know whether the archers will be booted out of your borders if you accept the trade (they're hiding under Loki, presumably on the way to join the garrison at Zbolub), but I'd recommend testing that before you accept the trade.

While I was collecting screenshots for my spoiler thread, I noticed that you have open borders with Mr. Bad "Ridiculous Graphs" Horse. Why are you giving a boost to his already outrageous economy?

Dave

But the really big news is in the lower right corner. Blight, ahoy!

So, I did the first round of whipping. I've tried to maximize food in the box, so the cities can do a few turns of whipping before starvation sets in.

[DaveV]

Turn 132 opens with a trade screen:



Yeah sure, whatever.

Next comes the Blight text:



And bad news in the log:



Ellimist has been agonizing over Guild of Hammers; this is the one that I was worried about. HK has a huge economy and can now buy a fast, strong army any time he needs one.



That's just me not having my head in the game. I should have been healing Loki in preparation for Blight; there goes my plan of Disrupting Acheron's city and having a big red dragon for a city garrison. Now my only remaining goal is killing Hyborem, which should happen pretty soon.

Blight turned out not to be much of a problem. The cities with substantial food deficits have enough food in the box that they won't lose any population to starvation. I have a bunch of Courthouses that are saving me about 4 gold each. If Ellimist carries through with his deepening plans, . With 20 more on the AC, we'd be at about 45% now, well on the way to Buboes. Sigh.




One of my exploring hunters ended up next to a spider (he won!).




I realized after I played the turn that I have contact with Brian now.



I sent a message to Brian:

Hi Brian,

I was so busy scrambling through my cities to mitigate Blight effects that I didn't even notice your barely alive scout until after I'd ended turn and was assembling screenshots for my spoiler thread.

Now that we have contact, I would very much like to sign open borders if that's possible for you (I'm not in the game to check).

Dave

He hasn't researched Calendar, so one of us will have to do that to enable open borders.

A round of communication with Tholal:

Those Archers should be set to UNITAI_CITY_DEFENSE which means they should just beeline for Zbolub, but since my guys are another turn out, I turned down the city offer. Please offer it again this turn.

Yes, I had offered Open Borders to the Hippus. I met them just before Ellimist and I was hoping that I would get more benefit out of the trade routes than he would. But I mucked it up. I'll cancel the deal when I can, in the meantime, I'm trying to get a couple of Galleys to explore some of his territory and I'll be glad to share any new map info I receive.

-Mahala Tholal

I offered Sludgehome again, but you're going to be on your own for Zbolub; Loki was killed by Blight damage. I should have seen that coming, but had gotten used to thinking of him as unkillable.

Dave

Lurkers: I'm ready to cede this to HK any time. Things are only going to get better for him and worse for the rest of us.

[DaveV]

Turn 133 opened with a trade screen from Hyborem.



I told him to get stuffed; he declared war. Never let it be said that Hyborem doesn't have any teeth.

Here was the setup before I ended turn. On his turn, he moved his trireme out of his capital, probably to pillage my fish.

[DaveV]

Turn 134. Most of the interesting stuff is shown in this screenshot after Hyborem and the barbarians played.




Bottom to top: Necromancy finished, Sorcery next (I have a great sage in my pocket who can bulb about 2/3 of it). DIY Newspaper (my rice/gems border city) gets an OO spread. Hyborem is bombarding it, and has a galley moving toward it. This would be a triumph for Tholal's Naval AI, except that the ship appears to be empty, based on the units in the city. Hyborem also got the bowyer event, but I don't expect it to make much difference.

[DaveV]

Turn 135. Again, this shot is after I ended turn and Hyborem played.




He moved the galley back into the city. If he pulls units out for a doomed attack against me, that's would be helpful. I will take Despero next turn. Two more Cultists are on their way up from the south to give me the firepower to take on Hyborem and his C5 promotions.

In the west, I spy a long road.



I sent an email to Ellimist.

Hi Ellimist.

Well, Blight turned out not to be a huge problem for me. I'm considering using my world spell to accelerate Adept production, but I don't see much point if you're still planning on firing off the Deepening. I can see on my map that there's a mostly completed road between Iskvard and Kalocly; I assume that means that HK is coming for you and that Tholal is trading maps with him.

Dave

The part about a map trade is wrong, of course - then I'd see HK's cities. Maybe the roads were already there when Ellimist explored?