Kyan Rhoentach: YY OF ZZ IN XX {SPOILERS}

[Kyan]

Ellimist popped up in the trade window asking what I would offer for peace. I'm kinda stalling for now as I don't want to give much/anything away. However, during the windows, I slipped in an open borders request.

The idea was that he wouldn't see it, as most turns we are offering a blank trade window with just text in.



He accepted, either knowingly or not. I'm hoping not as potentially this could buy us some time. If he moves into our land hoping for the war declaration prompt, he won't get it. That means he'll have to declare and waste a turn. Of course, it's possible he accepted it intentionally or he'll just cancel by declaring war via ALT. Probably a waste of time but worth a shot.

[Tasunke]

Who do ye think we are #2 to? (Ellimist or Yellow)

Yes, ofc its fine for a unit to be named Sexy Jim. Somewhat fits into the "townspeople" theme actually, even if its fit into the overall "evil" theme is debatable. But then again he was originally an AI, and some AIs are evil ... so maybe it does work after-all.

As for the city location, I am not entirely sold on the mountain 1 SE. I think 2 N 1 E might be better (the hill to the north) ... just depends if you want more land tiles +forward base ... or a sea-port that is really hard to access by land.

I would probably go for the northern hill and go HBR normally ...

But given the danger of the Archers, it may be better to take the southern hill and go Mining first.

If copper, then great, maybe we should go BW. But if no copper, then I think we should fit in HBR fairly soon (perhaps after 1 or 2 economic techs ... but with mining+gold already in, all we need is Mysticism for ElderCouncil + Godking horses I think :D)

If we don't want Godking horses though ... perhaps something like Mining (Gold) -> HBR -> Festivals -> Education -> CoL

If we do want godking horses, I think perhaps Mining (Gold) -> HBR -> Godking

If we go for Godking horses ... we may want to go down the Mil Strat line before switching to Aristofarming.

Either way, Festivals and Education are two primary (second tier) techs to get after we start pushing out our horsemen

[Kyan]

Who do ye think we are #2 to? (Ellimist or Yellow)

In the demographics? Not a clue, but I doubt it's one civ up there with us. Power aside, we're almost certainly in the strongest position. The Orcs are below us in every graph (by a decent margin) except power. If I had to bet, I'd guess Malakim for GNP (if we have similar starts) and Kurios for food (they also started with Agri and popped a tech early).

Yes, ofc its fine for a unit to be named Sexy Jim. Somewhat fits into the "townspeople" theme actually, even if its fit into the overall "evil" theme is debatable. But then again he was originally an AI, and some AIs are evil ... so maybe it does work after-all.

Jim was the most sinister of all A.I.'s. He enjoys hellions i.e. fire. A lot. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiP3eq1CstU).

As for the city location, I am not entirely sold on the mountain 1 SE. I think 2 N 1 E might be better (the hill to the north) ... just depends if you want more land tiles +forward base ... or a sea-port that is really hard to access by land.

I would probably go for the northern hill and go HBR normally ...

But given the danger of the Archers, it may be better to take the southern hill and go Mining first.

The biggest benefit to Ichabod's proposed site is the short term gain for the snowball. Getting the gold worked nice and early combined with being able to work a couple of farms makes this a very nice site short term. In BtS, i'd definitely be more inclined to settle where you suggest, but popping borders is a bitch. Settling there means we miss out on a LOT of commerce.

If copper, then great, maybe we should go BW. But if no copper, then I think we should fit in HBR fairly soon (perhaps after 1 or 2 economic techs ... but with mining+gold already in, all we need is Mysticism for ElderCouncil + Godking horses I think :D)

If we don't want Godking horses though ... perhaps something like Mining (Gold) -> HBR -> Festivals -> Education -> CoL

If we do want godking horses, I think perhaps Mining (Gold) -> HBR -> Godking

If we go for Godking horses ... we may want to go down the Mil Strat line before switching to Aristofarming.

Either way, Festivals and Education are two primary (second tier) techs to get after we start pushing out our horsemen

We just finished Ancient Chants. I was going to go:

Mysticism > Crafting > Mining > Festivals

What are your thoughts on that? God King is going to be amazing with this capital (with settled merchant, don't forget!). Mining to get the gold online as well as the multitude of hills we have.

Festivals allows us to work a bard for bulbing drama for the bard to bulb sanitation. This whole plan is subject to change based on the actions of the orcs though.

[Tasunke]

-> Mysticism -> Mining sounds decent.

After that ....

Either -> Festivals OR -> HBR just depending on our situation I suppose.

Then probably education or some sort of eco-Growth ploy (while the horses are stomping around).
-> maybe founding Esus during this phase would be worthwhile

[DaveV]

I'm working under the assumption that level 1 units can be insta-killed whilst others can't.

Correct. The insta-kill outcome is one of the possible results for the Bad lair outcome. The code explicitly checks for a level 1 unit before adding insta-kill to the list of alternatives.

[Kyan]

-> Mysticism -> Mining sounds decent.

After that ....

Either -> Festivals OR -> HBR just depending on our situation I suppose.

Sounds about right.

Then probably education or some sort of eco-Growth ploy (while the horses are stomping around).
-> maybe founding Esus during this phase would be worthwhile

I figure for economy, we want aristocracy or cottages as soon as we can. It's still very hard for me to get out of the 'cottages own all' philosophy but with the huge boosts farms get here, I think I fall in favour of them.

Once we got sanitation, a grassland riverside farm is 4food, 4 commerce. That's pretty damn sweet straight off the bat. Some cottages mixed in too would be ideal I guess.

Correct. The insta-kill outcome is one of the possible results for the Bad lair outcome. The code explicitly checks for a level 1 unit before adding insta-kill to the list of alternatives.

I'm sure it was you I learned that from actually . On an aside, I just noticed your sig. Don't put yourself down, you do have one pretty decisive victory under your belt

[Ichabod]

Hey Kyan,

An alternative if you don't want to go mining after Mysticism (i.e. if you want to go quickly to HR) is settling the plains incense to the east of the capital as a third city (in the grasshill 1S of the incense).

An incense financial tile is 1/1/7, if I'm not mistaken and it only requires the techs that we already have. You can share the corn with the capital and a floodplain (after the capital's second border pop) with the second city. So, growing would be fast.

By going this route, you wouldn't need to go for mining early. Maybe it's worth thinking about it, even if Mining soon seems like a very good idea.


About how to defeat the archers, I think going bronze warriors is better. BW is not a dead end tech for our early plan, since it's a prerequisite to Sanitation (while we want AH -> HR later, it won't do us muich good now), so it's justified beaker wise.

And the most important thing. A warrior is 16h, a horseman is 40 + a stable (67h). It's too much. The warriors would be needed anyway to defend the cities, so while not optional (would be better to waste hammers in workers and settlers), it's probably our best shot. There's a reson why bronze warriors are considered too cost effective.


Regarding cottages, I like putting them on plains. Plains farms are junk with Agrarianism. And grassland cottages end up being subpar compared to aristofarms. So I put some plains cottages to be worked while I still don't have aristocracy or I don't want the city to grow. Since slavery is nerfed, food is not so important as it is in BTS. So when not building workers/settlers, working some plains cottages at happy cap can be a good idea.

[Tasunke]

I think the BW/ Festivals/ HBR should be decided once we see if there is Copper or not.

IF copper, then we can BW into bronze warriors.

If no copper, then Horsemen will be our best asset (better than archers or axemen or catapults).

Obviously, if no copper, we will still have to rely on some warriors for defense, but we will need to get a City running on pure horse production to get some heavy hitters up and running.

High level horsemen can also make decent settler escorts if need be ... but we need Warriors to be protecting our cities. The Horsemen's job will be to clear the wildlands (get Exp from barbarians) and possibly do some offensive sorties against our enemies.

So if copper, likely (from mining) -> BW -> Festivals -> Edu n Code of Laws

Therefore we would be focusing mainly on the economy and (actively) defending with bronze warriors.

On the other hand ... if no copper, horses will be a bit slower to get up and running, but they will be able to create a much larger defensive screen surrounding our lands ... therefore we will be able to have a relatively successful farmer's gambit back home if all goes well (and we have the godking city pumping horses until switching to Aristo ...)

[Kyan]

This update will be picture heavy, so i've spoilered them to restrict the size.

Firstly, the real matter at hand, The Orcs. This was posted in the Tech Thread:

Even though large tracts of our Soil and old and famous Cities have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Goblins and all the odious apparatus of Clan rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength, we shall defend our Nation, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Which explains why Ellimist is rather eager to discuss peace. He has told me that he would certainly be willing to talk peace in exchange for some long term agreements of some kind. I've offered him a couple of resource loans, but said mana may be available. I've asked him to specify explicitly once he wants. Once he does that, i'll twist all the wording around to make it seem he's getting far more than he is and let him feel all good about the deal. Oh, was that out loud? I mean, we'll come to some fair arrangement.

Long story short, i'm fairly confident we can get peace signed. As a result, i'm going to act accordingly. With the crazy amount of free techs that the Orcs have got already, we need to play risky and, well, you'll see.



This shows that Ellimist fell for the scout dupe. He's heading into the hot gates where his strength and poisoning skills will mean nothing. His archer has either retreated, paused a turn for no reason whatsoever or is now 2W of the cotton.

Think you can avoid Admiral Akbar that easily my orcish friends?

Blighted Wanderer (our scout) will head South-West to try and find any huts the orcs may have missed whilst Sexy Jim and Mad Butcher pull a Gandalf at the ultimate defensive location. Don't forget that Jim is cover 1 + combat.

Moving on and in domestic news, successfully killed the Lizardman at our gates in Semirachye (second city). This yielded enough xp for two promotions

Unfortunately, it appears my sign regarding certain opportunistic wankers went down well with the locals. They saw it as some kind of rallying beacon...



Depending on Ellimist's response, I may be tempted to promote this warrior (Twisted Prince) Combat 1 + shock to be an ultimate barb deterrent. That's probably far too premature but thinking ahead is always good!

Talking of premature, allow me to show you our second city, Semirachye:


I'm under threat of an immense choke and i'm building what? A settler? Damned straight. Warrior is 1 turn from completion and can be finished if need be. The city is so food heavy and we are already covered for improvements in the short term. This settler is designed to go to Ichabod's gold spot.

Might as well show you the capital too:



Me and Mist were discussing and we decided that farming the first dye was far superior to a plantation. Thanks to the golden age, this city is crazy productive and will continue to build super fast warriors whilst it grows to cap. Orcs can't touch this. This post is getting lengthy so demos in next post.

[Kyan]

Top 5 cities list:



Not bad for turn 15 of a 6 player game. . Down side to this is that The Orcs can view this too, they really should be choking us rather than Yell0w.

But the Kurio's popped a tech and are insane with this set up! They started with agri too and will likely be even further ahead!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c69DzQ2Yu...re=related