Anyone up for an EitB SG?

[superjm]

Looking at the save, we lack the modes to get enough mana to build ToD for DE. What we could do is quickly take Caelestis to secure the Mirror of Heaven for ourselves so all we would need are mind and law mana, and then use Seven Pines to end the war immediately so that war weariness doesn't crop up again. Failing that I suppose the slow crawl to DE isn't the worst thing in the world.

Also don't forget we can still greatly improve Glens' hammer yield by replacing some windmills and cottages with mines and workshops and building the palace there so we can get a hefty God King bonus from it. The former might be difficult though if we end up losing the corn to Khazad.

[Mr. Cairo]

Got the save. Playing now.

[Mr. Cairo]

Ten turns played. Our economy is humming along. Running binary science we're actually now making more cash at 0% science than we are losing at 100% science.

Regarding tech, I went and got Sorcery, and queued up Iron Working. We're really somewhat lacking in even medium-tier units. At some point (might already be there) Tigers aren't going to be enough. Especially if we want to attack Kandros. 

Why attack Kandros? because he's beating Tebryn, they'll make peace eventually, and then he'll probably attack us. To that end I've starting building up our military. I traded with the Hippus for Iron (for a spare Crabs), and am building Chariots mostly, since they're our strongest unit right now. I also traded our spare Nature Mana for one of Kandros' spare Chaos Manas. I figure it could be useful to have a few Mages with Chaos. Certainly doesn't hurt. 

Speaking of Mages, I've upgraded all the Adepts that could do so, and improved our two mana nodes into Law and Meta. Law for the ToD (and summons) and Meta to end our reliance on Hawks for scouting, and because I generally think it's a good idea to have it.

I watched as the war raged around Gridmok. Try and make sense of this screenshot:

The city swapped hands several times, and the two sides' mega-stacks keep waling past eachother to attack more cities, before turning around to re-take Gridmok.

Up in the barb island, I burned that awfully placed barb city:

I replaced it with two new cities, popped the borders and got the fish. I also just delivered 4 workers to the island.
One city is on the ice hill with the furs, and the other is 1E of the Copper.

The AC reached 40 and Stephanos appeared, he ended up next to Froihk:


Before this anti-climax:



Overall, I think we're pretty well set up in our core to really start building up the military. Our colonies on the other side of the dwarves are growing nicely as well. There are a few cities in the south without religion yet, but that should be easily remedied. One annoyance is Glens losing a tile to Kandros and beginning to starve, we're going to have to farm over a Village. Another reason to beat up on the dwarves.

[haphazard1]

I get busy for a while and come back to find the turns flying by. Good turnsets, Brian and Mr. Cairo! Economic recovery, some additional cities, and some key techs have our situation looking much brighter.

[superjm]

Alright so first order of business. This really should've been done a while ago.




The blight has passed and we're swimming in happiness, so there's no reason at all to stay in Guardian of Nature. It'll also greatly speed up all the commerce improvements we've got strewn about.




Naturally, our science jumps by about 33%. We almost could just ignore the Tower of Divination entirely and hard tech to Divine Essence, but nah.




Gonna experiment with something I possibly found out in a recent SP game I played...

I decide to finish Iron Working just in case we do get into trouble with Kandros. If we're gonna do the tower I need to find another way to get a mana node anyway, so it's best to be prepared.




Sheaim takes back Gridmok, for what it's worth.




I've been trying to find where Kandros's main stack is but no to avail. Closest I've seen is something right here. Maybe it dispersed? Or maybe Sheaim is starting to make gains again?






Oh. Well never mind then. Not sure how I missed that?

Honestly fighting Kandros would be a really tall task now. he's got tons of good defense units strewn about and unlike the Sheaim we can't just Destroy Undead our way through his hordes of units. I'll try to maintain a military buildup for the next couple players, but I am all-in on getting the Altar by now.

Also 847 GPT. Quite a far cry from the -130 or so it was when we first switched. 37 turns makes a heck of a difference




Aha. Just as I thought.

I don't fully understand how the per-tile culture from a city works, except that in some fashion the closer a tile is to a city relative to its outer borders the more culture gets pumped into it, and this is a not-insignificant component to the whole formula. For some reason, popping a disciple in the city does, despite being a paltry amount of culture numerically, pump the culture of our borders in a way that's more significant then that makes that appear. If I can build and pop a couple more disciples into the city we should be able to claim our entire BFC back, including the body node.




Does building a Planar Gate as the Elohim spawn us units? Just asking.




I uh... what? I have no idea what any of this actually does. Were we in Esus all along? How does that even work?

I put open borders because why not I guess.




Huh, well that's a thing. Kandros is friendly with us but I don't know if that actually deters war in FFH2. I station a unit on Seven Pines just in case.




We have control of our node, and just in time too.




16 turns. Long, but we'll get that down. Don't you worry. 3 more turns to a GP by the way, let's hope we get the coinflip.




Wait, hold on, is this actually a thing? Does this mean if we have a Lanun city and build the palace there that we'll get extra food on all our water tiles?




Oh hey it turns out Commune with Nature gives Yggdrasil more food. Looks like even more hammers in Glens!




Well you took your sweet time with that Lanun.




Running the slider at breakeven gets us Divine Essence in 13 turns, while the tower will be done long before that. Good since we can divert our money and beakers to other thing.




Man, I didn't think the 5 or so disciples I made this way would help our borders to this extent.




Son of a submariner!

Well guess that means no golden age for us Oh well, I do the next best thing and settle both great people in Glens, which is about good for half what the GA would have given us anyway.

Still, shifting back to priest specialists helps a lot.

Honestly, we could probably just pop Sanctuary and win the game from here just sitting for 30 turns, but I imagine that won't be pretty fun. Assuming we build the Altar straight up this should be my last turnset of the Succession Game. If the rest of you want to have some fun fighting the dwarves or zombies or horseguy or whatever, be my guest. Just don't touch the mana nodes until the tower is done obviously

of course I still have one more trick up my sleeve.




One instant palace coming up! I switch to God King next turn.




Oof, that's a big hit to our gold production. Fortunately we're in the driver's seat, so it doesn't really matter. Also shaved a turn off the tower and will be able to build the Altar significantly quicker, especially as more production improvements come online.




I decide to hurry the last bit of the tower to get a head start on the Altar. Please don't do something silly and pick Bowyers by accident or something

So, for building the altar, here are the main points:

- Upon finishing the tower, the sun node will immediately be replaced by a farm, which should be worked. 
- After that, ALL of the lumbermills must be replaced by their respective production improvement immediately. Not only will this squeeze out more base hammers for Glens, it'll also chop all seven(!) ancient forests surrounding the city. With modifiers, that's 367 hammers just sitting there, for free. That's almost 1/5th of the Altar's price.
- Food will become an issue once the forests are chopped down. Just switch to Agrarianism and eat the starvation if we have to.
- Research is on Blasting Powder for improved mines. We might barely finish it before the Altar, but I'm not holding my breath. Tech choice after that is whatever amuses you.
- Aside from that, you all do what you want to do before victory

Alright haphazard1, take us home.

[haphazard1]

Looks like more excellent turns, superjm! We appear to be in position to cruise the rest of the way to the Altar. Even if someone decides to declare on us, we have multiple options to prevent that from stopping us.

OK, I have the save and will play shortly (need something to east first). Grab the tech, pump as many hammers as possible into the Altar as fast as possible, and hope nothing goes wrong.

The culture thing is interesting. Assuming nothing fundamental has changed with culture mechanics from base Civ, a tile within a city's culture zone gets the city's culture added to it every turn, plus a factor based on which ring of the city's BFC it is. This factor is (I think) a power of 10 based on which ring it is. So the outer-most ring gets 0 extra, then moving closer to the city you get +10, +100, etc. So for a city with 3 border expansions, the third ring gets the city's culture/turn, second ring is getting the city's culture +10 per turn, and the first ring is getting the city's culture +100 (!) per turn. This is why it is so difficult to flip tiles in a city's first ring if it has expanded borders a couple times -- the additional 'ring factor' usually exceeds the culture/turn of the city itself by a large amount.

[DaveV]

Looks like a sure win at this point. Good work, everyone!

Does building a Planar Gate as the Elohim spawn us units? Just asking.

After a quick look at the python code, I say yes. Elohim get to use almost all of the other civs' goodies.

[haphazard1]

OK, turnset played.

- Finished ToD, took Divine Essence as planned and started the final altar in Glens.
- Kandros declared on Tebryn again.
- Kandros built Chalid Astrakein.
- Tasunke offered us a defensive pact. I agreed, because why not? It should help discourage anyone from attacking us, not that this is a real worry with our world spell and Seven Pines in reserve.
- Finished Blasting Powder, and we have gunpowder...at Glens! Extra hammers are extra hammers.
- Speaking of which, we got the tin event...at Glens! I think the game wants us to hurry up and finish the altar and win this thing.
- Have started Mithril Working, but feel free to do whatever seems useful with our research. Could Glens have mithril too?
- Built a bunch of champions and sent them all to Glens to defend it, just in case. Not really needed, but why not?
- Just this last turn we were elected head of the Undercouncil, with Kandros giving us his votes to put us in the lead. No idea why he did not vote for himself?

We are three turns from finishing the final altar. Glens is starving after chopping all the ancient forests, but it will not lose pop before the end.

Take us the rest of the way, DaveV!

[haphazard1]

Cross-posted with DaveV. Interesting with the other civs' stuff. We have the option of building other civs' palaces -- would these replace our palace? Or be extras? As sources of multiple mana, they could be very valuable. And they would also serve as additional centers of government, reducing maintenance. So if that worked, just for the mana alone it would be more than worth doing.

[DaveV]

Got it.

You can only have one palace at a time. Building another civ's palace gives you access to their mana or strategic resources. but at the cost of your current set. More potentially helpful is the war weariness reduction (+20% for the Elohim palace, -40% for Clan or Doviello, -50% for the Mercurian, -100% for Infernal).