EitB AI Takeover SG

[Qgqqqqq]

You can download the correct mod v12.1 here. Note that you need v12 files also. Version 12.1 only gives some updates to Assets.

[Bobchillingworth]

Turn 1:

Okay, let’s see what we’re dealing with here.  




We have two cities and a terrible economy, thanks to the AI being overly found of FoL lumbermills.  Our capital doesn’t even control all of its own tiles, as it’s losing ground to a city Furia stole from us with Loki (this is with us having a settled Great Bard), and our only other town has a plains hill deer as its best food tile.  

On the plus side, we do have room to expand- we can cram in two island cities, plus two fishing villages within our own borders, plus another fishing village north of Furia.  There’s also a large, mostly vacant chunk of land semi-populated with Barbarians near the Sidar, but we have no way of reaching it until we tech Optics, which will take around 20 turns even if I select it as the first tech.  





Our military is about as fun-sized as our empire.  We’re in a lot of trouble if we’re attacked by Furia, or a particularly stiff breeze.  

We do have the Orcus Axe though, hilariously.  This will likely come in very handy.  





Our civics are… not as bad as I expected, actually.  About as good as could be hoped, given the circumstances.  I do immediately adopt Godking, though.  Can’t leave Guardian of Nature at the moment unless we want everything to riot.  We’re spiritual, so civics aren’t going to be what dooms us.  


I was going to post a picture of the infrastructure screen, but there isn’t much point.  It’s beyond pathetic for us being 200 turns into the game.  The only noteworthy item is having a stage 2 Altar of the Lounnotar in Killybegs.  


I didn’t want to take 5 pics to capture the full tech situation when I can sum it up in a couple words: it’s bad.  Our most advanced techs are Construction and Hidden Paths.  


Okay, triage time.  

First thing, I use a highly promoted Galley in Killybegs to kill a Barb Galley menacing our coast.  

One of our workboats creates a net on pearls, allowing our capital to grow another size.  

Our three Workers and two Slaves start work on more lumbermills, which is about all they can do at the moment.  

Our other Galley starts exploring the sunken wreck which has kept the AI from netting our capital’s clams for approx. 180 turns.  

I set tech to Mining.  We need to know where copper is, at least.  Notably, Furia doesn’t have bronze weapons on her Warriors.  

Capital starts on a Market, to take advantage of Godking.  

I will keep Killybegs on the 16 turn Settler for now.  We have absolutely no chance of getting anywhere with just two cities.

I should note here that we do have our Worldspell, so we might be able to survive long enough to sue for peace even if Furia comes for us in full force.  

None of the AI are willing to declare on Furia, and she won’t fight anyone else for us.  

I trade a spare deer to Decius for a cow.  

We could trade our useless nature mana for additional resources, but I’ll hold onto it for now.  

Open borders with Furia, for relationship points; she’s -1 annoyed with us by default, and I’m not brave enough to risk playing Sominum with her.  


Turn 2:

Furia pops a golden age and uses Loki to steal 10 gold from us.  -10 gpt is going to drain our stockpile quickly, since we’re already running a deficit.  

Our capital’s borders expand, opening a potential path to retake Slane.  

Oddly none of the graphs are working, so I’m not certain how much more powerful Furia is than us, but demos aren’t promising:





Sunken boat lair pops for a second treasure on our little treasure island.  Neat.  

At this point I think long & hard and… declare on Furia.  Yes.  She is defending her borders with two Warriors garrisons and doesn’t even have bronze weapons, while we have a small stack of reasonably tough Fawns and the Orcus Axe.  Might as well try to steal some breathing room and sue for peace.  





Inishbofin is taken at the cost of a single Fawn.  At this point I realize that even though these are “our” cities we’re recapturing, the game regardless them as Balseraph for the purposes of our Tolerant trait.  Phenomenal.  





I smokied Loki, who'd thought he'd broke me.


I also capture three Workers.  


Decius has enough on his hands.  Beeri is willing to declare on Furia, but we have nothing to trade him.  


Turn 3:

Arturus declares on Furia!  WTF.  He wasn’t even on WHEOOH mode when I checked just prior to ending the last turn…





Argentaria is defended by a single Warrior, captured without a loss.


Looks like the sunken ship didn’t actually disappear when I explored it, will try again, as well as with a second near Killybegs.


Turn 4:

Sunken ship at Killybegs is “destroyed without incident” by our Super Galley, now one exp away from a promo.  





Furia has too many soldiers in Slane for me to take it this turn, I’ll advance on Garryvoe instead, which only has a single highly-promoted Hunter defending.  She may more her Warriors out next turn, at which point I can start picking them off and earning some promotions.  


Turn 5:

Sunken ship on the clams is removed at the cost of some minor damage to our Galley.  





Garryvoe falls at the cost of a single Warrior; burnt!  It was a terrible location which claimed few tiles and orphaned a fish.  It also didn’t come with any infrastructure. We can do better.  I would expect there’s copper in the ice mine next to the ruins, though.  

Slane is still too well defended to assault for the time being, and there aren’t any other cities near us, so I’m going to play zone defense, while restocking our forces.  


Turn 6:




Mining arrives; we have a source of copper at Inishbofin.  Tech set to Bronze Working.  

Furia is willing to talk.  She’s also literally everyone’s worst enemy.  





Slane’s garrison is down to two units!  Furia has moved most of her Warriors to the worthless iceball city of Gaudium, for some reason. Captured, for the cost of a single Fawn.  


Turn 7:

Shuffled units around, upgraded our strongest Fawn to a Satyr.  


Turn 8:

Mesmerize a Bear.  Shuffled more units.  


Turn 9:

Furia moves a stack of Warriors back toward us from Gaudium, which I wipe out.  Drop science from 100% to 10% in anticipation of having enough exp for a few more Satyr.  


Turn 10:

Mushrooms popped at Inishbofin.  

I upgrade another Fawn.  

Capital switches to a 6-turn Settler.  
I’ll end my run here without ending turn, in case the next player wants to change builds or adjust our troop disposition.  


Thoughts going forward:

• I’ve placed several cities signs for consideration.

• We should be able to take Yonna next turn.  We may need to burn it, due to the risk of it flipping back to the Ljo, but we may be able to hold it if we use merge a captured Bear for +3 cpt.  Probably worth keeping if it’s arrives as the Ljo race, whereas if it’s Balz I’d suggest burning and refounding a tile closer to us.  

• We can probably take Gaudium too (whether we want to keep it is another matter…), after that though we may want to cash out, I suspect Furia’s core will prove a tougher nut to crack.  Then again, I’ve been using a Galley to pillage some of her nets, and she only has like a single Archer guarding the OO holy city of Mutanbo, so perhaps not?  She’s actually down to only ten cities left, so we might actually be able to roll through her core with a small, elite group of Satyr if she’s seriously rocking only 1-2 unit garrisons in every city.  Not what I expected, to say the least.  


Good luck, next player (I don’t remember who’s up)!  I’ve left you a few toys to play with.

[Qgqqqqq]

LMFAO Bob! I never would have had the guts to go for that, though I had observed her low garrison rate.

The reason the cities are all Bals (and likely why no graphs were working) is because I had to load it as a new game to remove Always Peace. (This wouldn't have been the case if we'd used EMM, which might be an argument for doing so in the future.)

I'm now a tad worried this will be too easy - though we do have a long path ahead of us yet.

Brian, you're up!

Edit: based on this, it seems likely if we'd chosen Arturus ormaybe even Beeri, the approach would've been the same. The main reason I didn't consider was they were swamped by Bals culture.

[Mr. Cairo]

I haven't said anything here for a while, but I am still in, and that looks like a very nice first ten turns, absolutely turned the situation around.

Did you check to see if Furia would accept peace after turn 6? And would we be able to get anything for peace? I wonder about the respective merits of continuing the war if Furia keeps putting up such a pathetic fight, or if we should take the peace and space to develop some.

[Bobchillingworth]

As noted in the entry for Turn 6, Furia will take peace. She might even be willing to cede Gaudium for it, not certain.


In my experience the Balseraphs rarely fortify cities taken with Loki very well; still, I figured I'd capture 2-3 cities and then be forced to take peace at the earliest available opportunity once Furia pulled together a doomstack. As it is, I have no idea where her army is located, if she even has one; it can't be that impressive, if two-city Arturus was willing to rumble on Turn 3. I think Decius is going to declare on her as well.


How challenging this SG is will depend on how well Furia fights back; if we can capture a good chunk of her core with a half-dozen elite Satyr and then consolidate before someone with an actual army attacks us, then we'll be well on the path to victory. If we have to sue for peace with what we have on hand, then we've got breathing room to claw ourselves into contention (assuming we raze / capture Yonna & Gaudium we'll have space for about a dozen cities total on our side of the pangea), but will likely be up against T4 units by the time we reach Hannah, who is almost certainly vastly more advanced.


We can always move on to a new variant if this one turns out to be too easy, or generate a new scenario with the difficulty maxed.

[shallow_thought]

Wow. I had thought we'd need a little more preparation than this. Something like getting ice mana into play (how many turns into the future?) and advancing cautiously, using Sanctuary to hold cities while poking down stacks.

Bob knew better .

[DaveV]

The reason the cities are all Bals (and likely why no graphs were working) is because I had to load it as a new game to remove Always Peace.

Couldn't you have done it by editing the worldbuilder file?

Impressive start, Bob! Although I agree with the growing consensus that this one is probably going to be too easy now.

Edit after checking the save: it's odd that we can't build Freaks in the Balseraph cities; we have the right tech (Festivals). Advice for Brian: send an expendable unit over to open the treasure chests. They will probably just give us weak items, but they are costing us unit maintenance every turn they're sitting there.

[Brian Shanahan]

I see the save and will grab it in a couple of hours, will post thoughts on what I plan to do and play tomorrow. I must say that's impressive work Bob.

Re Arthurus, when looking at the pre-game save Q left us to decide on, I saw he was only a tad behind the Balseraphs in power, and my initial thoughts (before realising all the relations would be reset) were "bribe him into war and dogpile". So I'm not too surprised he jumped in off his own bat.

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok, I've looked at the game and my plan is to keep pushing Furia until she gives us something for peace.  She'll talk right now but wants Argenteria back which is too big of a price to pay.  My guess is that whatever army she has is down south and is duking it out with Arturus' dwarfen army.  In other war news Beeri has gone WHEEhorn, and he's not happy with Furia (not many are even with the reset) so he may just pile in if she gets beat up a bit more.

Our army is small (I can see the graphs {they start from turn 200 though} and were about 1/3 the strength of Furia and behind everybody), but we've got a couple of well promoted Satyrs and a few more fawns that can upgrade as soon as we get moolah, so science will stay off for most if not all my set.

Our biggest problem is actually money, our science rate is abysmal, with the breakeven at c42% giving us 25-26 beakers per turn. We need cold hard cash in a bad way, so I would be suggesting that the player after me goes for economic techs and civics, especially after Furia is pacified.

The two settlers coming out are destined for the four tile isle and the tundra spot with the two fish.  The four tile island gets it's plains hill tile settled, as it's the only way it'll get food (the crabs) and the one tile hill island (once the dungeon is cleared) will still be swimming in food with two fish.  I've marked a spot where we could possibly put a very filler city down the line, its only use would be snagging the whales so I'm not sure on placing it.  And we could also put down a city where the bear is on the tundra hill just to secure our copper, but again, long term prospect. I like Bob's city spot (the lower case c) but it's a bit more long term.

As I said this'll be played tomorrow so if anybody wants to look at the save and chime in, I'm all ears.

[Qgqqqqq]

The reason the cities are all Bals (and likely why no graphs were working) is because I had to load it as a new game to remove Always Peace.

Couldn't you have done it by editing the worldbuilder file?

Yes, that's what I did. But loading that WB save means starting it as a new game.