Miguelito gets tricked by magicians, but Bob isn't fooled. Kaiser rules from behind.

[Kaiser]

Thanks, that is what I missed

[Kaiser]

Ok, I am back home and had a look at the save.

I see there is a new barb city SW-SW-W of 6 (which has been settled), do you have any plans for it yet?
Would you keep it or raze and settle 12? Keeping it would leave a settling spot NW-W-W of 6

Gereth Minar is not working the GS at the moment, is this so you can get enough scouts out to secure the S barb city?
Securing 2 barb cities would be a very benefit, but at least the N one is not aligning perfectly with our settling plans.

Wines are finally connected this turn, yay, I remember it was supposed to get into the borders by T66, so I assume worker labour was in short supply?

How much more turns are you saving up before getting FoL?

I see we now own a bear, do you have any plans in motion for the spider in the S or do you leave it so it can eat daves Warriors?

There are also 2 Hill Giants in the desert. How certain are you that Dave's Hill Giants would show their names?
If they would not, this could indicate dave being W/NW of us, but that would also mean that there is a weird map balance as Auror seems to have two neighbors (us and Cairo), us would have 3 (dave on top) and Cairo would have 3, likely 4 because Mackoti has to be somewhere as well.

[Miguelito]

Ok, I am back home and had a look at the save.

I see there is a new barb city SW-SW-W of 6 (which has been settled), do you have any plans for it yet?
Would you keep it or raze and settle 12? Keeping it would leave a settling spot NW-W-W of 6

Gereth Minar is not working the GS at the moment, is this so you can get enough scouts out to secure the S barb city?
Securing 2 barb cities would be a very benefit, but at least the N one is not aligning perfectly with our settling plans.

Wines are finally connected this turn, yay, I remember it was supposed to get into the borders by T66, so I assume worker labour was in short supply?

How much more turns are you saving up before getting FoL?

I see we now own a bear, do you have any plans in motion for the spider in the S or do you leave it so it can eat daves Warriors?

There are also 2 Hill Giants in the desert. How certain are you that Dave's Hill Giants would show their names?
If they would not, this could indicate dave being W/NW of us, but that would also mean that there is a weird map balance as Auror seems to have two neighbors (us and Cairo), us would have 3 (dave on top) and Cairo would have 3, likely 4 because Mackoti has to be somewhere as well.

just  a few quick responses, report follows tonight hopefully:

•  that barb city would probably be ok to take the wheat, and then plant on the riverside desert hill in the south instead of the projected city. It's been around for a while but I still wanted the cotton fast so I planted 6 as by the original plan. Also new cities are very costly, so they need to be powerful
  
• I screwed up with the scientist. Again . Thanks for the heads up.
  
• we're still very much short on workers, yup. Also the capital wasn't growing as it was building the settler for 6, and we connected the wines right this turn after growing to size 9, so it did fit well enough.
  
• I started Way of the Forest this turn we might just manage 4 turns. But... somebody founded the religion this turn  (I'd assume Dave? I could track score increases of course). Doesn't matter too much, I was not overly interested in the shrine anyways, and we still get a disciple upon researching it so we can spread it. But of course the holy city would have been nice, as it effectively amounts to a free spread (+ culture, and whom am I kidding, the shrine would of course be nice). I assume I'll spread it directly to the capital, and start right away on a temple and disciples for the other cities. That means that the cap will not get a hunting lodge for some time to come, but it'll build fawns instead which are even nicer.
  
• The sentry scout will move into the desert next turn scorpion hunting, and if she doesn't find one she may just go for the spider. Also the super scout in the deep south could try for it, but she needs 2XP first.
  
• The giants have been hanging out in the desert for ages now, and I'd assume Dave would use them with more aim. So I think they are actual barbs.
  

[Miguelito]

Ok, let's report some.



I really didn't want to. I wanted to send this scout into the desert S and look for scorpions. But our friend here kept stepping into her way begging to be part of the team, so I fulfilled that wish. Just 2 turns to heal for her, so that's ok (now, t75, she's 2E of the gold. No scorpions yet, but more Cairo territory in the desert, so I'm fearful that we might not find one. I actually wanted to look in the NW desert, but did not find a way to get around those hill giants. So that will be the job of the hunters).

Micro problem at the capital:


It's just making too many hpt to build scouts, as inevitably overflow will get lost. The scout is at 14/16, making matters worse. I hope we can finish her when we move again from hammers to food for when cotton comes online. I did not actually build a hunting lodge but rather a worker.

In other news, we're at war:


Because I did find a way to get past the hill giants: The mobility scout, starting from that desert hill ran 3xNW, out of their range. But, she found an unpromoted Auror warrior. Auror apparently still had an axe to grind and attacked her at 34%, and won  . She had C3, the only unit that I have not promoted to shock, because she was set up for the spider .(I have left several Auror warriors alive in the south when I could have snatched them, but w/e).
Auror offered peace, but I'm pettier than that:


Sadly got her only to 25/26XP and she even got hit pretty hard. She then saw this:


So there is a city going down on S or E of that corn.
I retreated NW and offered peace (edit: I just realized that he can road the corn and kill her. Oh well. That was a trap then and I should learn to control my blood thirst)

I keep making a demos shot every turn, but I should look more closely occasionally:


First off, the part that I do always check: We're back into a nice position with food and mfg. Meanwhile the cost of 6 cities is crushing our finances (Dave was pretty smart to first propose immortal and then draw a civ with just 3 cities ). What we can do about this is to keep cottaging and pushing out workers for that purpose, and that's what I'm doing. We also have 3 fairly recent cities which are still growing into their potential (and in particular they're working little commerce yet).
Also back to first in land area, undoubtedly thanks to Cre, but also more expansion at least compared to the neighbours we know.
Now what escaped me is the massive rival best power . I'm topping both Auror and Mr. Cairo, so that has to be Dave or mackoti, and the other one of them is somwhere above 82k. So, those two each have 100 points more than the rest of us, they include the leaders in GNP, MfG, and CY (because I see the other guys' graphs), and they also maintain the by far largest armies (and I'm aching under unit cost already). No idea how they do it. The one saving grace is that they likely are neighbours, so that power hopefully is meant for each other.
Also from score it seems that mackoti, not Dave, founded FoL. What does he do with that? He might want to get some ancient forests before switching to a better religion, but those are a lot of early beakers for that purpose. I am worrying that his plan is to get the hero (Kithra?) for a war against Cairo. Would be a shame, because I was expecting to have FoL exclusively (as I didn't think it makes a lot of sense for non elves). We can try to push hard for hidden paths of course. Like, fishing->BW->festivals->HP. That delays priests a lot though. And if mack is beelining it I would doubt we could catch him.
He has not converted though (I would see it on the scoreboard even not having made contact, right?), which likely means he is waiting for a GA (oh yeah, Bone Palace), but still that indicates that the beeline may not be as direct.

[Miguelito]

The longer I think about it the more it feels like not taking Auror's peace was a debacle. Moreso because of the possible effect on his long term attitude towards us.
Otoh we look like his only viable target anyways, and will maybe just need to rely on the big stick for good relations.

[Miguelito]

A new idea that I have is beelining Hidden Paths while getting a great prophet to bulb priesthood. That would mean getting up a pagan temple in Gereth, plus a Temple of Leaves when it's available. The problem of course is that the pool is loaded with the sage already, so it would be a very low odds first try, and then on the second round still 33% sage because 23 turns on just to priests is just too slow.
OR we stop the GS before completing, and get up the temples in Idris, which of course is still just size 3 but at least has the copper for some nice production. I'm starting a pagan temple there (switch from EC), to have that option, although 147 hammers will take a while as well . Right now the city is just making 3 hammers so it doesn't matter too much.
Would take like maybe 12-15 turns for the temples, then 10-9 more for the prophet (the first priest starts working when the pagan temple is finished of course).

Bob, I'd be quite interested what you think what mack is planning with FoL.

[Bobchillingworth]

Ah, I didn't catch that Mack had founded it. He'll likely attempt the same trick he used to some success in the last FFH PBEM he participated in, where he beelined the mounted hero and gave him the Commando promotion for deep strikes into enemy territory. Might want Fawns and PoL to make up for the deficiencies of Golems as well, though Fawns aren't really all that impressive without Sinister, unless he think he can get enough exp to produce some Satyr out of them.


Probably not going for the Mercurians, though ancient forests lumbermills would be nice for the city Basium inherits, since PoL units don't automatically become Angels upon death.


Separately, I would strongly encourage you to keep your experienced Scouts alive by keeping them close to come for zone defense and as a rapid-reaction force, and to build new ones to capture those barb cities ASAP. Animals are nice and all, but free cities are much better, and it'd be disastrous if Cairo or Auro captured them instead, as it'd hem you in rather badly and give them attack vectors to your core.

[Miguelito]

Ah, I didn't catch that Mack had founded it.  He'll likely attempt the same trick he used to some success in the last FFH PBEM he participated in, where he beelined the mounted hero and gave him the Commando promotion for deep strikes into enemy territory.  Might want Fawns and PoL to make up for the deficiencies of Golems as well, though Fawns aren't really all that impressive without Sinister, unless he think he can get enough exp to produce some Satyr out of them. 

Ok, the question then is, do we want to try and steal the hero? We are dead last in GNP by a margin, and it's going to get worse with two new cities coming up, although I'm building nothing but cottages (besides resource tiles). I think we would need at least Fishing and BW before starting on Hidden Paths. Mack has not converted yet (again, it would show on the scoreboard even without contact, or am I wrong?), so he can't research it yet. He got his first GE last turn (15 turns after the WS), but no Bone Palace or other wonder yet.

The question for me is if a HP beeline is actually worthwhile for him. I'd assume that he wants to rush wonders, for which he needs tech. Otoh why else would he beeline WotF (btw, he'll have a very hard time getting a shrine with all the engineers. His best bet would be the drama bard).

I am trying for the prophet in Gereth (with the heavily sage leaning pool), as starting up a new GP in Idris would just take too long, between building two temples and converting the city. We would need to research Philo in order to bulb priesthood of course, further delaying HP.

Fake edit while writing: OH WAIT. Apparently a prophet can bulb hidden paths just as well (as long as we have no philo). Very interesting. Need a good dice roll then. Even tempted to roll a clean prophet in the capital now. Of course working specs there hurts a lot between Deruptus and GK. Probably a very bad idea. I should also reevaluate the Idris option.

Separately, I would strongly encourage you to keep your experienced Scouts alive by keeping them close to come for zone defense and as a rapid-reaction force, and to build new ones to capture those barb cities ASAP.  Animals are nice and all, but free cities are much better, and it'd be disastrous if Cairo or Auro captured them instead, as it'd hem you in rather badly and give them attack vectors to your core.

I heard you (might not ever have reported it), and actually right this turn we started moving out*. About 6 fresh scouts, 1 experienced one, 2 semi experienced warriors, and a hunter. I've noticed that once you approach their cities' borders, they tend to advance with one of the archers, so hopefully we can catch one of them outside the city.
* Still in borders. Next turn we leave them, and we'll be revolting so not paying supply. Genius, isn't it ?

The main problem is that I have no settler for the connecting city. Had to start one in Nameless Tower, which hurts because it should be building hunters. Going to take 8 turns. But the capital has to build a temple and disciples, and Gereth is busy with the temples as well. So that new city will have no trade route for a while, and also lay exposed, meaning that we will need a good number of units around there. The main fear would be Auror taking the opportunity to come from the east, but I don't think so. He has no bronze weapons yet and a single warrior in the border city (I have the spider watching, mainly to see if he builds a galley). He'd also need to cross swaths of unsettled jungle/forest, and has not scouted the new cities (apart from possible settler scrying)

[Bobchillingworth]

You don't need to adopt the Guardian of Nature civic any time soon, right? Kithra or whatever is a nice hero, but personally I'd rather have an army of PoL sooner than one strong unit. Heck, I'd rather have your civ's UU, who is about as strong and also comes with an awesome piece of equipment and requires a tech which also unlocks a unit which will mulch Trebs and counter most of Cairo's best military options. Kithra isn't a game-ender by himself.

[Miguelito]

Bone Palace down