[SPOILER] I hate sand, it's coarse and gets everywhere. But I love money.

[superjm]

So here's where we're at T57




Mining just came in the turn before, so I'm chopping all the forests I can before working on mines. The plan is to road over to the X in the lower left and settle there to grab the wine in second ring and have some rivers to work. You'll also see some Xs around my cap representing spots where I definitely want to place cities since they'll be close to the cap. Definitely the northwest site first since there's copper right there. Beyond that though, my tendency is to expand westward since the west actually has some good river sites and potential luxes for happiness. The east is completely riverless and besides, the Kuriotates aren't expanding there any time soon so I'm sure there'll be some land for the taking.

As for tech, I'm gonna try and found OO. My science has been good since the start and I have all the necessary techs needed to keep my workers useful for the time being, save for possibly getting cottages up which would be delayed. In any case, this map screams Cultists and seeing as I'm Malakim, it seems like the obvious route to take. I'm hesitant to go all-in on coastal sites though, as the Lanun world spell is a thing. Also I'm working a sage in the capital to get an academy, and I already have the desert shrine up so in-between settlers I'll probably get some lightbringers going to prepare them for OO upgrades. My second city will probably alternate between workers, warriors, and other miscellaneous stuff while I get OO up.

After OO I'll probably get Education and Sailing in some order, then work towards Priesthood. Hopefully by that time I'll have enough cities that I can maybe pop the world spell and go straight for Kuriotates immediately, but that seems optimistic. And of course if I'm beaten to OO then, well, then we're kind of in a bind.

Also belated look at the map from many turns ago. Sadly the scout I built died almost immediately, so I haven't revealed anything more. Really should get on another scout before too long.

Also demos from this turn.




Feel free to make suggestions

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the update and explaining your thoughts/plans! Makes things much more interesting for us lurkers.

Have you seen much barb activity? Any events worth mentioning?

[superjm]

No events except the typical free money stuff which helped power research for a while. Barb warriors started showing up from the south but they all died trying to attack Timberling, so nothing special. There's a goblin you can see approaching our borders from the west but that's a trivial concern.

[superjm]

Got OO in my third city.






Had to sacrifice a bunch of food in tile rejiggering to be able to get it this turn though, and that's with the newly minted academy in the capital from the generated sage this turn. Of course in the process of juggling tiles I left that nice wet rice farm in Timberling completely unworked for no reason at all. Oh well, it happens.

Really need to start transitioning into cottages soon, either that or run slavery. I don't like slavery that much in FFH2, not as efficient hammer-wise especially considering how expensive everything is and happiness is hard enough to come by as is. Getting slaves is pretty nice, but you need to actually fight to be able to benefit from that. I could be wrong though, wouldn't be the first time.

As for tech path, Education and Sailing are still priorities but I really should squeeze in Cartography so that I can swap to city states once city maintenance starts to become a problem. Will probably do that in-between Education/Sailing and Priesthood.

[superjm]

Wow RNG is being kind to me.

First off, we knew it was coming...




I mulled over this one for a bit. Getting rid of creative sucks as I really do like it, but since I managed to get OO relatively quickly it'll be trivial to make up for the lack of Creative in new cities provided I keep my disciples in order. Decided in the end to go for EXP, it's the only trait that still provides an immediate and strong benefit to my empire, as I'm at the point where I need to pump out cities and the production bonus will make getting settlers from my capital and expands much faster. Cheap harbors isn't a bad prize either to squeeze out some more commerce from all this water.

But the big news at the end of turn




I will gladly take the free happy and extra commerce, thank you very much

I always forget this feature is a thing in Civ 4, and it always seems to crop up at the most delightful times. This is going to be a really nice boost to my empire and allow even more growth. I could actually run slavery if I wanted to since after the temple finishes I'll have 12 happy in the capital. We'll see though, cottages will be coming online soon.




Oh, and I finally found Cairo to the NE. He has some Beastmen wandering around and is already up to 7 cities (Expansive is good). Demos aren't that spectacular despite this, I wonder if he's lacking happiness for his cities.

[haphazard1]

Very nice, popping some gems.

[superjm]

Sorry I haven't reported as of late, turns have been pretty quick and I've been busy with the move I mentioned in the tech thread.

We're not in the best spot, but I think as Malakim I can manage if I can catch one of my neighbors off guard. More info probably after next turn.

[superjm]

I had a planning and update post all ready to go a couple turns ago, and then DaveV attacked me and I lost several cities

Nothing really doing right now except for spamming Cultists and trying to survive. Dave is dealing with Doviello too and has by far the best demos and power so it looks like it's his game to lose anyway. Lanun continues to be strong

[superjm]

DaveV made a good call attacking me as quickly as he did I think, my expansion was slow and I was just finishing up my cheap temples in all my core cities and settlers to claim the remaining spots I wanted before popping the World Spell and focusing on straight unit spam. My mediocre early game forced me into a glass cannon strat and he was able to exploit that, nothing to say but well played.

In hindsight, I should have built more workers and settlers instead of aggressively pushing science as hard as I did to claim the OO holy city. Maybe if I had done a really fast Priesthood and popped the world spell early to kill Mr. Cairo that would've been worth it, but as it stood if I wanted to play late game I should have played my early game accordingly. Easy to get tunnel vision seeing what kind of map I was on and how good Cultists would be on it

Oh well, I had fun, could've invested a bit more time and effort into planning and reporting on the game but it is what it is. Dave probably has this one now that me and Auroracher are crippled, it only stands to see if Doviello can withstand the Cultist spam.

I was a tiny bit miffed at how the map rolled for me, as I really wanted to avoid having a primarily coastal empire with Lanun in the game, but the lack of any useful river systems outside of the W/SW area around me kind of forced my hand. They were pretty good cities mind you, it's just... well if you followed DaveV's thread you'd know just how easy it could be to just waltz up and raze them en masse

[DaveV]

Your cultists scared me more than anything anyone else had, so you received the brunt of my attention. You did a good job defending after the original surprise attack.