Black Charadon brings Heaven to heel

[The Black Sword]

Here's a T50 update. Current turn update will be coming as well, haven't been able to report properly really.

Lucian managed to escape the menacing tiger, and survived a gryphon attack, to get a chance to heal up:


In the south, I settled city no. 3 on turn 50, unfortunately, my preferred spot was still aflame, but I had prepared a road to the hill just in case. 2 workers in position to farm the corn. The city immediately started a monument. I was first to the third city, with the exception of Bob, who I have not met.





I think I built another Beastman here, though I might have put the overflow into a monument instead.



Cu Chulainn meanwhile went straight to another settler for the corn/gems spot down here:



Afterwards the 2 cities focused on getting some workers out to get a lot cottages down immediately as Education came in.



Blowing people away in food, GNP looks worrying, I need to make sure it doesn't collapse completely before the basic economic techs come in.

[The Black Sword]

So, the current turn is T66 and in between T50 and now, my economy crashed and has just begun to recover:



I stretched my food lead even further, up to around 70 pretty quickly. Then once education came in I began paving over farms for cottages and it has stayed fairly constant, allowing others to catch up.









It was this 4th city that crashed the economy. It cranked up my civic upkeep as well as the hefty maintenance payments and had no first ring plantations to pay for itself. Fortunately, Lucian pillaging that town was enough of a shot in the arm to get me through to God King and close to Mining also, I think I got around 100g from that.

It wasn't without cost though:



Lucian got caught by the tiger while heading back to the town and is now diseased. Still +50% overall at least. The scout is my other special unit. I want to get him 1 more promotion for Sentry.

In the south, I've had some interesting relations with Tholal:



When I first founded my city there, I had a chance to steal his worker on the incense with my super-scout. But I didn't know how much retaliation I could expect. I moved the scout onto the corn with a Beastman to say that I could have taken the worker but chose not to. I had 2 beastmen and the scout covering my workers as I improved the corn and another beastman in the city but I didn't march on his city which was probably vulneruble to that.

Of course, counter to these actions I built a road on the corn. I've had a lot of spare worker actions. There was big demand when education came in and there'll be another now with Mining but I've been building a fair number of relatively useless roads in between. Hopefully they'll be more useful for me than for Bob later on. Anyway, I still wanted to signal peaceful intentions, so I left a single warrior garrisoning the city, to tell him he could improve the incense. He's now improving it with the single warrior as cover who I have odds on. I also put a second warrior back in the city because Svart scouts attacking from the fog scare me.

Why am I being nice to Tholal when I want to take him over? Well, I don't think that's economical just yet. I want him to settle a few more cities for me to take(he's only 3 at the minute), not start churning warriors to slow me down. And more infrastructure to pillage would be good too. I also want to settle some of the land in the north myself first. Tholal seems to be last in all the demographics, so I don't think I need to slow him down yet. What I do need is every city to be profitable, including this one. I think I can get to Bronze weapons before Tholal, if so, I'll probably attack him then. Otherwise, maybe wait for shamans.

On the tech path, I need to decide whether to detour to Animal Handling or Fishing before those. My cities are going to become unhealthy when I cut down the forests and I've already taken the best sites available without those techs.

Of my other competitors, DaveV appears to be doing nicely:



I imagine he'll take over that barb city culturally before I do. I think he's in the same problem I am though, with an econ crash. His graphs look a bit better but they also include extra Cre culture. He's not in God King so I guess he's going for the Aristo path. It will be interesting to compare the two approaches afterwards. I guess I'll be stuck in cottage mode now and eventually traverse to City States from God King. Both of these techs are useful though, as opposed to Code of Laws which won't do anything else besides Aristo for ages.

Quick comparison:
God King currently makes me about 6g and 2h per turn.

Assuming I changed all possible cottages to farms, Aristo would make
24g , -1f (including upkeep, both civic and city).

Which sounds like it's far in Aristo's favour but remember I'd have only just discovered it and I'd be 278 base beakers from my preferred tech path. In particular, getting Mining earlier is going to be worth a lot, in gold as well as hammers, due to opening up riverside tiles. And as I unlock the good tiles around the capital with Mining, GK is going to improve a lot. Also going for GK: cottage growth, synergy with Deruptus, which is where my chops are going to go and elder councils. I'll keep tabs on this and see how it goes.

Superjm is still on 3 cities but appears to have a real gnp advantage according to the graphs. Still hard to say whether this is better or worse IMO. Bob though is the worrisome one. Chatting during the blitz, it seems he's got 4 cities at least and is already in Aristocracy. So I think he's the one with the top GNP, as well as having caught up in food/hammers. It would be great to get his graphs to compare.

Some areas that I should probably settle before the Tholal war:




City sites are definitely not finalised.

[The Black Sword]

DaveV went an even more interesting path: straight to city states. For comparison:

GK: 6.5gpt, 5hpt

City States: 15gpt, and growing much more quickly if I want to expand

At least I got Dave's OBs, need to connect up a road quickly now. He settled his 5th city btw, mine comes next turn:


That's to be expected I suppose, when I just put 120 hammers into monuments. I'm rather regretting the one in Huan btw, I don't have the worker labour to improve those tiles. I would have preferred a worker over that settler too but I put some hammers in and then I didn't want them to sit there unused.

My scouting has definitely been profitable:



Found the Amurite lands. Based on process of elimination, the Calabim should be in centre of the map, slightly south. Even more important though, was another mana village:



The guardian was not hidden nationality, so I'm sending another Beastman over to pillage ASAP. There seems to be plenty of mana nodes btw, for a leading civ to go for ToM. I suppose the fact that the majority are in border regions makes it a bit more difficult.

In the capital, I've been trying to decide about Deruptus, putting it off for now:




Once BW comes in I'm going after Tholal. He's not in apprenticeship, and his GNP is in the toilet. How are his standard S3 warriors going to stand up vs my S4 shock ones? He recently settled his 4th city, but I'm really going to need city states at that stage. That does make me regret my GK choice. Even if I get a lot of pillage gold, that just means I'm not using the GK gold bonus. At the time I thought shamans would be an important advantage but now I doubt I'll need it.

Demos:


I'm pretty sure the Calabim are the top figure everywhere. I'm very worried about them. I have to hope my conquest evens the odds.

[The Black Sword]

I meant to do an opponent analysis earlier but the turns have just flown by, so I guess I'll combine it with a(still slightly outdated) ranking of everyone's start as well.

DaveV

In the orginal draft I had saved for Dave I said I thought he built too many units in the early game, which could run counter to his barbarian trait. Well, according to the power graph, I seem to be more guilty of that than him. It feels very risky to me not to get units out when I can, given that I'm settling up on Tholal and have no economic form of production yet. Dave seems to be leveraging barbarian better. Averax is a combo very similar to Charadon, except it’s probably a bit more focused with one big fiery advantage instead of more numerous smaller ones. In addition, Cre is better than Char for the rush gameplan but he doesn’t have any start bonus. He seems to have expanded out reasonably quickly to 3 cities, only slower than me and Bob which is to be expected. Given how expensive tech is, I'm already looking at monuments everywhere before I have a chance for religion, so Cre should really start boosting him now. It’s probably good for both of us that we have similar civs and we’re not against 4 late game ones because we couldn’t hold them all back. Averax also has a lot of synergy with pushing up the Armageddon counter and some nice Archmages but both of these bonuses are too small to matter. Ultimately, I don’t see Dave closing out the game as Averax though.

Expected Finish: 3rd

Tholal

Tholal seems to have had a typically weak elvish start. It looks like he's last in expansion and trailing down the bottom with me in GNP as well. Unfortunately the elvish economy is not going to get a chance to pull him up because I'll take him over first. I find it hard to see how he can beat my shock beastmen, especially with his border city sitting on flatland. I'm trying to signal peaceful intentions for the moment because I need to get my economy set up first and copper weapons and shamans out before I can attack him. I also want to let him settle a few more cities that I can take. I haven't seen Tholal perform really well in a game here, so I'm hoping he doesn't come up with any surprises for me.

Expected Finish: 5th

Bob

Despite the start handicap, Decius is still probably the strongest pick of our lot. He would be the favourite but I have to put myself first in my own rankings! Bob's the only civ I have not met yet, so it is hard to judge how he's doing. From the chat during the blitz it seems he's got aristocracy and 4 cities right now. That's about expected but also pretty scary. I don't think he has my food hammer stats but I expect his gnp is a lot more reasonable. Calabim just have every base covered, with aristo+ org for gold, governor's manors for hammers and moroi for muscle. And that's before they get their signature unit. If there's one weakness, I think Bob is a bit erratic and agressive.

Expected Finish: 2nd

Superjm

Dain is the other late game civ I'm scared of here. And not only is he a late game civ, he also has a hard counter to my mage strategy. His start has been slow, only ahead of Tholal to the third city but he got his early academy and seems to be doing quite well in GNP which is a good trade-off I think for this map. He'd have been my preferred early rush target but I didn't find him, have to hope someone else does. While we're being hopeful, how about I take out Tholal, Dave finishes superjm and then we both tag team Bob. I'm giving him an expected finish of 4th but I'd say he has a higher chance of coming in first than Dave, if that makes sense. I don't know much about superjm as a player unfortunately because I never really followed 24.

Expected Finish: 4th

[The Black Sword]

I settled Grey Wind on the copper, costing me an extra 8gpt:



With that, and bringing the gems online, I became the food hammer leader again:



Maybe I needn't have been so pessimistic. Anyway, you can see Huan's settler is due out in 6 turns and I need to decide where to put him. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go AH next to connect up the pasture resources for health. I have cow in Huan, sheep will come from the first Svart city I take, so ideally the next city would pick up some bacon. That's complicated slightly by the fact that AH will be a bit behind the settler completion. There are 4 options:

1. Pictured above North East of the Eye of Heaven. Lots of jungle to clear, so heavy on worker turns. I'd need to double check I can get the necessary road finished in time. Quite a strong site though.

2.

Probably the 'or here' sign, since I won't have fishing and a WB ready. No pig though and the health will be important. Claims the mana node from Dave, also opens up a second city to defend. Nicely green, but not a lot of hammers in the first ring for the monument.

3.

Very strong hammer location. Possibilities to move the dot around as well. Bear might be tricky to get around(one of the reasons for AH btw is to capture him for a free monument). Wastes a turn compared to a settler built in the capital. If the city is delayed another few turns, Fenrir's 3rd ring borders will pick up the pig. Opens up another front to defend from Tholal.

4.

Still can't figure out exactly where I want a city over here! Again a turn wasted moving compared to a capital settler. Workers will be better positioned and it's easily defended. Some spots have very nice hammer potential. No real food until AH.

Writing that, the first option does sound best if I can get the worker turns.



Superjm had a warrior covering a worker beside that grass hill, I would have liked to go that way. Guess I'll see if it's a dead end up here. Main objective with this guy is to try for circumnavigation.

[The Black Sword]

Turn 79, I get access to Bronze weapons and the Doviello descend on elf-dom:





Leaving 1 unit garrison per city, that's 10 Beastmen and Lucian for him to deal with and Fenrir and Ghost on constant Son of Asena duty. I'd prefer 2 Beastmen, but I'm not willing to pay the maintenance, that's probably the difference in my GNP and Daves.

The Svarts GNP has been in the tank all game and I'm pretty sure they don't even have mining yet for copper access. I haven't done the necessary C+D to figure out what they have researched though. They recently settled their 5th city, which is great news for me I think. They need to tech to something to change the odds, just unit spamming won't work. My Beastmen have 70% odds attacking over that river. Their food and production is behind me and Dave but ahead of superjm. And, here's the power graph:



Speaking of which, Dave's taking some liberties with my friendship here:



I think he's settled pretty much all of his cites in my direction now. And when you can see I have over twice his power and he can't know about my relationship with the elves, that city seems a bit risky. Still, he's my preferred friend both short term and long term and I should have plenty of room to expand after the Svarts are dealt with so I guess he can keep the mana node.

My capital is getting some value out of GK, even if it may have been a mistake:


Deruptus felt like a better investment than a new city. It will complete in 6 turns, so I'm teching AH first and then hopefully Cartography can come in right as Deruptus is finished. That depends on pillage gold though. I've gotten 52g out of the northern mana village so far.

Another benefit of GK:


I'm getting another elder council up in Huan, getting the timing of these GPs right could be tricky. The two most important ones are the 1 person GA and a sorcery bulb, but I doubt I'll be ready for either in 20t.

[The Black Sword]

So, Tholal left his units there. I was thinking of just moving across the river and attacking next turn but on reflection he'd probably just retreat then before I can attack. I can live with losing 1 Beastman from 3 combats to kill 3 of his and I'll get better xp too.

And that's exactly what happened:



41g from the capture btw. The last guy was not fully fortified, so I sent Lucian in at 90% odds. Slightly risky, but Lucian isn't too special any more and he needs to take fights like that to get xp for the Titan.



I'm promoting a lot of units to C2 rather than shock unfortunately, in case of svart scouts, or a gryphon that could be on that water.

This gave me enough gold to grab AH a turn earlier than I can use it, and my GNP is amusing with research turned on but no pre-req bonus.



I have 4 turns to get to Cartography, hopefully that is possible.

[The Black Sword]

Some scouting of Tholal's capabilities:



3 shock units that could cause trouble.




I do sort of wish I had taken Sentry on Lucian. On the other hand I wish I had attacked with C2 Beastmen originally, at 66%, rather than Shock ones at 70%, I could have taken sentry on one of those. Still, hard to see what could go wrong here. He can't match my units without defensive bonuses, even if he somehow stacks those up, I have no problem calling the worldspell if necessary.

Another advantage of taking over the svarts is pictured; pre-built forest cottages.

I still have a bit of a worry about him sending his scouts up around, that might be the best way to damage me:



Power:


Here's an overview of the north:


Capital managing to grow and complete Deruptus without a single food hammer to spare. Between that, the EC in Huan and connecting the incense in Draugluin, my gpt at max tax jumped from 22g at the start of the turn to 41g at turn end.



The capital is looking very nice. Still it's about time to research Cartography I think, 2 turns behind schedule.

GK: ~14gpt, 7hpt
City States: 35gpt

I like keeping the option open of upgrading the Beastmen to Sons of Asena though, in case of surprises.

Some scouting:



I'm beginning to think my non-HN guy was an anomaly. Maybe when I get to HBR I can send someone to pillage this.



I'm sure Dave is updating well, but here is what I've scouted of his territory. The low size of his cities is particularly interesting I think. I have Char, gems, ale and cotton over him. According to the victory condition screen, I have 28% of the world's pop and Dave is in second place on 19%.

[The Black Sword]

The elves abandoned Thariss. Probably the right move, given what happened last time they made a stand, though I hadn't decided whether I wanted to move across the river if he stacked enough units there. That is based on the assumption though that he has lots of units in the fog, enough to counter attack my forces after defending with good bonuses. Given the power graph, those units probably don't exist and it's just me being paranoid due to lack of sight. I'm definitely keeping watch over this area from now on though:



Desperate plays probably should be on the table for Tholal.

[Qgqqqqq]

Nice rush!