[SPOILERS] PB1- Mardoc buys a can of paint for Thoth and Ellimist

[Thoth]

Uh...why were we so insistent on those Reliquaries first?

lol

Thoth, I've got to admit, Subdue Animal scouts was a brilliant idea. Bootstrapping 16 hammers/scout into this menagerie has been quite a good exchange rate, even if the scouts didn't keep mostly winning their battles. 170 hammers for four griffs and two spiders would be worthwhile...but we're by no means done accumulating :D

It's worked out better than I'd hoped for. :hat: 4 Griffies and 2 spiders I'd expected to cost us a lot more hammers in sacraficial scouts. As things are, I think we can hold off on building more scouts for the moment. The ones we have should suffice for a couple more griffies and a couple of Lions for Calabim Cages. Elephants we'll want Hunting and some Hunters to take down reliably.

[Ellimist]

True, but we need to come up with +2 happy for the Orcs to make up for the happy hit when we swap from Religion into Consumption.  1 Happy can be covered by markets but we'll need something to make up for the other point.

Getting the ivory improved fits the bill nicely.

<snip>

9t after Trade we'll have currency and the happy in place for the Orcs to pick up Consumption instead of Religion.

I actually think our best move with consumption is to shift the gems to the Clan at the same time that we switch civics. We're already putting temples of Kilmorph into each Clan city, so it's +2 happy across the empire. Ivory can go to the Calabim, along with bathhouses and carnivals and whatever else we can get. When the Clan cities start to get markets, we can just expand those cities.

The Calabim happy cap is already good, and also relatively flexible.  If we do end up with a bit of Calabim unhappiness, it doesn't hurt that much as we still get the manor hammers and the cities can still keep working their best tiles.

Post Currency we should be able to knock off Festivals/Hunting/Archery in around 4 maybe 5 turns total.  Then grab Feud/Kote/Philo/Warfare/Smelting/IW?

I agree with those techs, with one modification. Once we have currency, I'd like to race for the great commander from Military Strategy if it hasn't been born yet. It's a tech that we'll want anyway, and we should be able to get Philo+MS in around 4-5 turns, so let's try to get a GC as well. Not only will we get our Calabim command posts, but we also can build three Heroic Epics (2 of them with warrens, and maybe the third gets Heron Throne)

After that, let's sweep up the cheap techs that you listed. Or we get them before MS if someone beats us to the GC.

Agreed that the Island colonies should be Calabim.  They set up cheaper (cheap GMs and cheap Lighthouses) and will be more productive than Orc or Elohim cities would be.

Shouldn't be too tough to arrange for a pair of axes and settlers to be ready for the Galley and another pair of each ready for when the galley returns (or we cash rush another).

SoKs are another tool we might rely on to get the island cities going faster. Maybe send six over to rush a monument and Heron Throne.

I checked GNP numbers, btw, and we are not getting any "known civ" bonuses for sailing, so we should have a nice little window without competition to settle any islands, even if defending them against OO units later on could be tricky.

Also civics:

Once Trade is in it's swapping time. :hat:

Orcs pick up Undercouncil and maybe Conquest?

Vamps pick up Undercouncil and Military State.

Elohim pick up Overcouncil, Military state and maybe Conquest?

I actually prefer the benefits of Overcouncil for the Calabim, unless we want them to start in Under for the resolutions. Military State sounds good with vampires coming soon.

Elohim obviously will go with overcouncil, but I'm not sure about conquest for them. Foreign Trade could be better with a shift toward cottages.

It's worked out better than I'd hoped for. :hat:  4 Griffies and 2 spiders I'd expected to cost us a lot more hammers in sacrificial scouts.   As things are, I think we can hold off on building more scouts for the moment.  The ones we have should suffice for a couple more griffies and a couple of Lions for Calabim Cages.   Elephants we'll want Hunting and some Hunters to take down reliably.

Agreed. The Elohim cities are taking some time off of scouts already to build libraries, and unit upkeep is getting relatively expensive already.

[Mardoc]

Military State sounds good with vampires coming soon.

Gonna have to think about the rest - but you're not planning to draft Vampires, are you? That was a deliberate EitB nerf, they're no longer draftable.

It might be worth doing anyway for the +15% hammers and support cap, of course.

[Ellimist]

Military State sounds good with vampires coming soon.

Gonna have to think about the rest - but you're not planning to draft Vampires, are you? That was a deliberate EitB nerf, they're no longer draftable.

It might be worth doing anyway for the +15% hammers and support cap, of course.

I'm aware that they can't be drafted, but the experience from apprenticeship is wasted on them and I'd rather build them with +15% than -10%. The support cap increase is nice as well.

Slavery is actually another possibility to consider for getting new manors up faster, but MS is probably stronger overall.

With the Titan exp, apprenticeship does less for the Calabim than the CHA Elohim anyway.

[Thoth]

I actually think our best move with consumption is to shift the gems to the Clan at the same time that we switch civics. We're already putting temples of Kilmorph into each Clan city, so it's +2 happy across the empire. Ivory can go to the Calabim, along with bathhouses and carnivals and whatever else we can get. When the Clan cities start to get markets, we can just expand those cities.

The Calabim happy cap is already good, and also relatively flexible.  If we do end up with a bit of Calabim unhappiness, it doesn't hurt that much as we still get the manor hammers and the cities can still keep working their best tiles.

I'd much rather keep the happy with the Calabim. By the time we *can* swap into Consumption (9t after Trde) we'll have ToKs up in most of the Calabim cities and they'll be dependent on that happyness in order to keep working their tiles (growth will be *fast* in Calabimia with all the San farms we've got coming online. And big Calabim cities are a very good thing.)

For the most part we don't gain much by growing Orc cities past size 9 (10 if we can swing the cheap happy). We do have some good, unworked tiles in Orc territory. But that is best solved by another settler and another size 9-on-the-cheap city.

I agree with those techs, with one modification. Once we have currency, I'd like to race for the great commander from Military Strategy if it hasn't been born yet. It's a tech that we'll want anyway, and we should be able to get Philo+MS in around 4-5 turns, so let's try to get a GC as well.

Sure, if the CG is still available by that time, let's take a run at it. But Plako/DaveV have the pre-reqs already and we still need Philo after Currency. So I don't think we'll get the GC

Not only will we get our Calabim command posts, but we also can build three Heroic Epics (2 of them with warrens, and maybe the third gets Heron Throne)

After that, let's sweep up the cheap techs that you listed. Or we get them before MS if someone beats us to the GC.

I agree 100% on the value of Calabim CPs (80h for +20% military production? OH YES!) and Heroic Epics. But HE and HT together is pure :weed: . HT improves marginal tiles to decent tiles but a no-Lanun HT throne city will never compete with an inland city for base hammers.

Orc capital, Zinfandel and Whiskey are all very solid HE candidates (though we might want the Elohim HE in a Tolerated city if we can get it up and running in time. Whiskey needs Archery and a Bathhouse to really shine as a hammerhouse but it'll be very, very good in a relatively few turns.

Zin will be a lousy Feasting city (too many food negative tiles to sustain growth) but that's fine. Because those food negative tiles are lovely 4h plains hills that we can feed with Sanitation farms. Slap down the HE and pump out Vamps like no tomorrow. Also....if we do happen to grab MS before Feud then we can get a nice pile of Chariots out of this city in the meantime.

SoKs are another tool we might rely on to get the island cities going faster. Maybe send six over to rush a monument and Heron Throne.

True, we can use SoKs to jumpstart the islands (monuments especially if we go with Calabim islands) but the Calabim can get rolling faster than Orcs or Elohim without SoK support. And those hammers could be going into more Settlers/Thanes/Workers/Soks for Warrens.

Heron Throne would be kind of nice to have, but it's not essential by any stretch of the imagination. Those island cities don't actually have to do much other than exist. 6 SoKs is enough to rush 1 1/2 warrens. I'd rather have the faster warrens than the faster HT.

I checked GNP numbers, btw, and we are not getting any "known civ" bonuses for sailing, so we should have a nice little window without competition to settle any islands, even if defending them against OO units later on could be tricky.

We'll want to own the nearby shores for sure if we want to keep our Island cities. But that's a problem for later (maybe...)

I actually prefer the benefits of Overcouncil for the Calabim, unless we want them to start in Under for the resolutions. Military State sounds good with vampires coming soon.

Overcouncil will be the better long term civic but:

1) The GS from Under is our best shot at a Calabim GA

and

2) That gives us 2/3 votes on the Undercouncil so we can vote the Orcs in as head and......

3) Get Secret Codes and Smugglers Ring passed as the first two resolutions. GS for the Calabim GA and a spare in Orcdom for an Academy somewhere or a bulb or towards a GA. Smugglers Ring gets +1 trade routes in *all* cities. Which helps our foes out a bit as well. But we have a city count lead and by the time we can get the resolution passed we should have another 30+ cities on the board.

Once we have those two resolutions passed, trip the Calabim GA and swap into Overcouncil (assuming we aren't running AV in Calabimia) plus any other final civic tweaks we want to make. (maybe pick up Nationhood if we can afford the happy)

Elohim obviously will go with overcouncil, but I'm not sure about conquest for them. Foreign Trade could be better with a shift toward cottages.

Conquest lets us use our surplus food for hammers rather than wasting it under "Avoid Growth". It also lets us keep building level 3 units while taking advantage of the gold savings from MS as well as the hammer boost.

FT? Sure maybe later if we have some Elohim cities we actually want to cottage (other than the capital)

It's worked out better than I'd hoped for. :hat:  4 Griffies and 2 spiders I'd expected to cost us a lot more hammers in sacrificial scouts.   As things are, I think we can hold off on building more scouts for the moment.  The ones we have should suffice for a couple more griffies and a couple of Lions for Calabim Cages.   Elephants we'll want Hunting and some Hunters to take down reliably.

Agreed. The Elohim cities are taking some time off of scouts already to build libraries, and unit upkeep is getting relatively expensive already.

Mil State will help with upkeep. But once we have Libs down, I'd like to focus on SWs and Chariots from the Elohim native cities. Once we get to Fued/IW we'll want *Vampire from the Calabim and *Ogre from the Orcs. So that leaves it up to the Elohim to produce our main mounted force.

[Thoth]

Military State sounds good with vampires coming soon.

Gonna have to think about the rest - but you're not planning to draft Vampires, are you? That was a deliberate EitB nerf, they're no longer draftable.

It might be worth doing anyway for the +15% hammers and support cap, of course.

+15% + unit support vs 2 relatively unimportant xp and -10% production. Hmmm.

Also, Moroi *can* be drafted.

And they upgrade to Vamps.


Expensive, but if we suddenly need a lot of boots.....very handy.

Slavery is actually another possibility to consider for getting new manors up faster, but MS is probably stronger overall.

Slavery requires Philo and with the land we have, whipping sucks even harder than it normally does in FFH.

If we *really* need to rush a GM we can use a couple of SoKs to help it along. But there is decent production on most of this map and with Archery we get better "burst" hammers from chopping forests we don't want to turn into gamelong assets with a Lumbermill.

[Mardoc]

Post Currency we should be able to knock off Festivals/Hunting/Archery in around 4 maybe 5 turns total. Then grab Feud/Kote/Philo/Warfare/Smelting/IW?

I agree with those techs, with one modification. Once we have currency, I'd like to race for the great commander from Military Strategy if it hasn't been born yet. It's a tech that we'll want anyway, and we should be able to get Philo+MS in around 4-5 turns, so let's try to get a GC as well. Not only will we get our Calabim command posts, but we also can build three Heroic Epics (2 of them with warrens, and maybe the third gets Heron Throne)

After that, let's sweep up the cheap techs that you listed. Or we get them before MS if someone beats us to the GC.

I want another one before picking up all the military techs: Animal Handling. We need Hawks or Floating Eyes in order to use troops effectively. I'm ok with delaying it until after Feudalism, though, on the theory that recon isn't worth much if you can't back it up.

Agreed that the Island colonies should be Calabim. They set up cheaper (cheap GMs and cheap Lighthouses) and will be more productive than Orc or Elohim cities would be.

Shouldn't be too tough to arrange for a pair of axes and settlers to be ready for the Galley and another pair of each ready for when the galley returns (or we cash rush another).

Devil's advocate time: does the potential for a few more hammers in the distant future really outweigh the immediate and continuous maintenance burden? That burden has only a 20% reduction, remember. If the cities are so hammer-poor that Manors are the best they can have, it'll take an awful long time or high investment to get those Manors built. Do you really want to send Vamps on a boat to get their feasting in?

SoKs are another tool we might rely on to get the island cities going faster. Maybe send six over to rush a monument and Heron Throne.

I checked GNP numbers, btw, and we are not getting any "known civ" bonuses for sailing, so we should have a nice little window without competition to settle any islands, even if defending them against OO units later on could be tricky.

What if we do our rushing with cash instead? Or just accept that the islanders will be a backwater, and settle them primarily for the trade routes? It's not like they'll be awesome cities no matter what we do - we might get one up to 2/1/2 tiles and a Manor, and the other two to 2/0/2 tiles and a Manor. Can add one more to each tile post-IW with Shipyards.

If I were to spend four SoK anywhere in the empire, though, I think I'd much rather put a Manor in a floodplains heavy city than put it in an ocean city. 5/0/3 tiles will pay off a heck of a lot faster than 1/0/2 ones. Or even 2/2/3 ones (post Heron, Shipyard, Harbor, and Lighthouse). And if they're going to grow slowly, mostly focused on their own infra...then make them Clan for cheapness.

Or put the SoK into a Warrens. Or a critical monument. Or...there's a lot of things that will pay back faster than an ocean city.

It's not that it's ever bad to have a Manor, just that I think we can pay back our investment much quicker if we do our spending on mainland cities than if we work on ocean ones.

Or was the reasoning to get Org lighthouses? It's still an awfully big investment for a city that's not likely to pay back anytime soon. They're worth settling for the sake of trade routes, but I don't see them contributing net hammers anytime soon. I don't have costs in front of me, but Manor + Shipyard + Lighthouse + Harbor + many turns for growth = long long time before it's making ships or Vamps.

I agree 100% on the value of Calabim CPs (80h for +20% military production? OH YES!) and Heroic Epics. But HE and HT together is pure :weed: . HT improves marginal tiles to decent tiles but a no-Lanun HT throne city will never compete with an inland city for base hammers.

Orc capital, Zinfandel and Whiskey are all very solid HE candidates (though we might want the Elohim HE in a Tolerated city if we can get it up and running in time. Whiskey needs Archery and a Bathhouse to really shine as a hammerhouse but it'll be very, very good in a relatively few turns.

Zin will be a lousy Feasting city (too many food negative tiles to sustain growth) but that's fine. Because those food negative tiles are lovely 4h plains hills that we can feed with Sanitation farms. Slap down the HE and pump out Vamps like no tomorrow. Also....if we do happen to grab MS before Feud then we can get a nice pile of Chariots out of this city in the meantime.

Agreed. HT is handy, and HT + Shipyard is getting to be semi-decent (which will be feasible post-IW), but it's still no match for a plains hill mine. Nor is it a match for a city which has hammers now, today. If you're not Lanun, island cities take forever to grow up.

[Thoth]

I want another one before picking up all the military techs: Animal Handling. We need Hawks or Floating Eyes in order to use troops effectively. I'm ok with delaying it until after Feudalism, though, on the theory that recon isn't worth much if you can't back it up.

Agreed we want Animal Fondling. Hawks will be our DEW line of choice as they can still scout under AL. After Feud sounds good.

What if we do our rushing with cash instead? Or just accept that the islanders will be a backwater, and settle them primarily for the trade routes? It's not like they'll be awesome cities no matter what we do - we might get one up to 2/1/2 tiles and a Manor, and the other two to 2/0/2 tiles and a Manor. Can add one more to each tile post-IW with Shipyards.

Agreed that barring some awesome specials, the Island cities will mostly suck. But they'll be decent workhorse production cities with Manors. Their main value is the trade routes they provide, not the hammers.

If I were to spend four SoK anywhere in the empire, though, I think I'd much rather put a Manor in a floodplains heavy city than put it in an ocean city. 5/0/3 tiles will pay off a heck of a lot faster than 1/0/2 ones. Or even 2/2/3 ones (post Heron, Shipyard, Harbor, and Lighthouse). And if they're going to grow slowly, mostly focused on their own infra...then make them Clan for cheapness.

Or put the SoK into a Warrens. Or a critical monument. Or...there's a lot of things that will pay back faster than an ocean city.

Hell, yeah. Spend the SoKs where they'll be a decent payback.

It's not that it's ever bad to have a Manor, just that I think we can pay back our investment much quicker if we do our spending on mainland cities than if we work on ocean ones.

We can evaluate that equation a bit better once we've got some idea of what our (currently still hypothetical) Island cities actually look like.

Or was the reasoning to get Org lighthouses? It's still an awfully big investment for a city that's not likely to pay back anytime soon. They're worth settling for the sake of trade routes, but I don't see them contributing net hammers anytime soon. I don't have costs in front of me, but Manor + Shipyard + Lighthouse + Harbor + many turns for growth = long long time before it's making ships or Vamps.

The Island cities won't contribute anything to our mainland military. But with Manor/Lighthouse they can at least provide some hammers towards their own defense.

We're not the Lanun. And we're on a land heavy map. We'll wind up working some coast tiles, but we'll never be dependent on them.

Agreed. HT is handy, and HT + Shipyard is getting to be semi-decent (which will be feasible post-IW), but it's still no match for a plains hill mine. Nor is it a match for a city which has hammers now, today. If you're not Lanun, island cities take forever to grow up.

Yep. We'll want to grow the Island cities as much as possible to maximize our TR value but they'll not make any meaningful difference to our hammer output.




Oh!

And we're up BTW.

[Thoth]

Devil's advocate time: does the potential for a few more hammers in the distant future really outweigh the immediate and continuous maintenance burden? That burden has only a 20% reduction, remember. If the cities are so hammer-poor that Manors are the best they can have, it'll take an awful long time or high investment to get those Manors built. Do you really want to send Vamps on a boat to get their feasting in?

Distance maint is already reduced by 40% thanks to Aristo. Then by 25% (20% GM + 5% Law Mana). If it turns out to be insanely high (ie more than 15gpt) we can arrange for one of the Island cities to build a Calabim Summer or Winter Palace.

While I don't expect a *lot* of hammer production from the Islands, we get the *most* hammers per pop from the Calabim. Plus the Calabim can get their pop cheaper via Org LHs. A GM + Lighthouse (built at double speed with GM hammers) means water tiles are effectively 2f 1h 2c. Not spectacular, but decent enough as a bonus to a city that's primary reason for existence is to simply exist.

Smelting isn't all that far away so if needs be we can bootstrap the islands on 1f/2h Workshops + Seafood. (If there's no seafood or landfood, it doesn't matter: The city will suck no matter what we do. )

[Thoth]

Just logged in as the Elohim

We can 2t a Lib in Gin and start Glib in 3. If we want to take a run at Glib we need to do it *now*. Warbaxia hit Masonry a few turns ago and have had plenty of time to get libs in place so if they're planning on the wonder they'll beat us to it unless we're nimble.

Not the end of the world if we do lose Glib. It's nice to have but it's not gamebreakingly good.

And the Griffon meter is now at 6.