[spoilers] Ia! Ia! Com'h'dor fhtagn!

[Commodore]

Thoth? No clue...probably settling up on me. Or about to immortalize me...Krill just snagged AH, I wonder if I should make a spear first. In any case, I'll slowly walk up here to my plateau. Novice, Pindicator are now also in Krill's Two Cities club...this is sloooow.


I think I want to be ambitious in the Scooteranian direction. How this for a defensible border?


I've doomed Scooter from similar...

[Ceiliazul]

I think I want to be ambitious in the Scooteranian direction. How this for a defensible border?

I think you scout worse than a blind squirrel.

[Commodore]

Vive la revolution!

I think you scout worse than a blind squirrel.

[Commodore]

The high crystalline blue waters of the Buddaporta River move languid through the dry high steppes of Leng, where keening winds and the distant howl of mountain wolves harry the thoughts of the small, hardy men who live in those hills. The land has a serene beauty to it, interrupted only when men look to the skies and feel the thinness of the shell between their world and weirder places beyond.

To the southwest of the plateau the rivers drain into the Miskatonic, in towering waterfalls into a narrow canyon region that separates the Miskatonic Valley from lower river reaches. It is here that the men of Arkham made their first settlement upon the Plateau of Leng.

The men of the new city listened to the winds and meditated, and the wisest or the maddest of them became monks, following the Mad Budda of Leng in his teachings, and their gongs and ohms echoed across the Miskatonic River. But they never wailed like the monks in the valley would; in Leng, men never raise a shout to the firmament. For sometimes, in a voice as quiet as a whisper but as chill as the stars, in the Plateau of Leng the sky answers back.

[Commodore]

So that milestone fell on an eerie note:

[Commodore]

Thoth, by the way, isn't doing much this second...neither he nor Scooter have settled, which is odd.

Serdoa is a cypher, naturally. I just hope he doesn't cypher his way to sniping Buddhism; 2 turns to go...

[Commodore]

Double-whip, and then the worker goes directly to chop, netting us a perfect little 4t settler. Sweet! Clearly, the unworked mine means I need to be sharing more; Innsmouth will be leeching pigs/mine for a little while yet.


Looks like we're free and clear, and shall expect to find Buddha on our doorstep next turn! Excellent, excellent. Wheel->Fishing next, so that we can actually connect our cities together. Looks like, incidentally, Krill has a decent city spot to the northwest as will with that river rice. I'll peek into the borders of his city next and then wander off peaceably; warriors are going to be spawning now and I need to be able to handle that.

[Commodore]

Useful Lessons: PBEM 34s

Okay, so I've been referencing the term 34s a fair bit, why/what/who is/was that? Clearly I'm sitting here grasping a hold of my first free-for-all win like a totem, right? Well, maybe, but I also think there is a lot about that game that applies to this one. It was on a tiny(20x20!)map, four people, rotationally mirrored. The costars of that game were Scooter, Pindicator, and Automated Teller. Like this map, 34s was a tight, hilly map with nonetheless a lot of lushness. Unlike this game, it was Always War, but if I don't think of this game as "Always Could Be War" I'm a fool. It was a game I won with good play, lost with bad play/dogpile/Scooter playing a blinder, and then finally won again with a commando strike. It was also probably the craziest game I've ever played.

I'm already bumping uglies with Krill, who has his capital an appalling 8 tiles away. Like in 34s, expansion is critical early, despite the overall numbers of possible cities being tiny (in 34s, I maxed out at 7, here's it's looking like 11-12). Krill is already a step ahead gaining the strong whales/corn/silver site...Leng might be able to hold its own and I hope he realizes my positioning indicates conservative play, but it might mean he's just going to be throwing stacks early and often my way. I'm going to crash my economy, we all are (save maybe Thoth), and heavy garrisons will be the norm on all sides. Without going into a full review of the older PBEM, here are some lessons I've learned:

-Horses are good. Small as the empires are, barbs early and other players early and late can threaten on any side. A roving mobile force is a must to deal with threats; horse archers, camel archers, on up to cavalry will all see a lot of action. Not only for defense, either...having heavy horse units available allow rapid exploitation of opportunities on any border left uncovered.
-Culture is king. Lose your first ring, you can basically write off a city, because it will get blitzed by siege and heavy hitters fast. In a similar vein, the only way to make headway after the initial land rush is to culturally win the land first, otherwise, you're dooming any little border fort because of the above consideration.
-Military is vital, but if you stop making infra, you'll fall behind. In all things, balance should be sought...go too light on units, you die fast. Too heavy and fall behind in tech, you die slow.
-Mobility, mobility, mobility. ENGINEERING and RAILROAD are major techs...woe betide the player who lacks them when his neighbors do.
-Siege, please. You will get invaded. So be ready to hammer a Stack of Doom.

[Commodore]

Won it! Okay, Novice and Krill probably didn't both just also finish Meditation...


Krill's barracks is three turns old, so he won't lose the whales or anything daft like that.

[Ceiliazul]

He won't lose the whales, at least not right away...