[EitB 55] Miguelito's and Ginger's thread is where the magic happens

[Tarkeel]

I can at least confirm that the difficulty is the same for every player, it's not the case where only the first player had a set difficulty.

[Miguelito]

I can at least confirm that the difficulty is the same for every player, it's not the case where only the first player had a set difficulty.

yeah, it's fine, just need to adapt. Foodhammer first strategy feels vindicated.

Can anybody confirm that I understand adaptive correctly? It is always the same time interval right? I ran a test game on quick speed and was prompted to pick a trait only on turn 71, which is a weird number, and later than I expected.

[Miguelito]

fastest settler I can come up with, on t16 at size 3. Just improve ressources clockwise, and fine tune a bit so God King doesn't lose bonus hammers and growth is without excess. Rice-rice-pasture and rice-pasture-rice both have me missing the t17 settler by just 1 hammer.
That doesn't answer what to do with the fast settler though. I suppose NE of gold is the most likely. A chop (2 turns + 1turn moving) can provide 13 hammers into the workboat, or we go just straight for the gold and work rice meanwhile. Also need to connect the city at some point, but I think that's a task for the second worker due right after growing to 4.
The opening is a bit light on warriors, but with 3rd ring borders and the lightbringer for fogbusting I hope it will be ok.

[Miguelito]

found copper!


damn, moved away from it


found more copper!


yay, moved towards it!

Might have to farm one or two of those floodplains :/. The second city I'd say still goes for gold/fish, if for nothing else than because down here we'll need loads of worker labour. And I believe in order to actually use the copper for bronze working we also need to research BW first, right? At least we can already build Soldiers of Kilmorph before .

I can see cities on the desert plot E of cotton, maybe SE of it as well, or just on top of ivory? Food is rather scarce around here, in any case.

[Miguelito]

I'll try to do more oppo analysis yet, but fear factor:

1. Auror with Faeryl Viconia (Arcane / Raiders / Sinister ) of Svartalfar
   
2. Q with Aerendel Phaedra (Spiritual / Creative / Dexterous ) of Ljosalfar
   
3. Bing with Auric Ulvin (Arcane / Charismatic / Agnostic ) of Illians  
   
4. Brian witbh Einion Logos (Philosophical / Charismatic / Tolerant ) of Elohim
   

In short, Auror is quite good and has monster traits. Q obviously knows the game and has a solid pick, curiously with the same leader traits as what we start with. I'll trust him to go Leaves and leave the other religions to us. Bing's Illians can be nasty, but I hope that he's green enough yet to not be a serious threat. Finally I really enjoy Brian's posts in any thread, but has he ever played MP? Not since I've been observing at least.

[Ginger*]

So our two biggest estimated threats both have civs that go for recon line units, what do we have available to us in the religions/priests that can counter that?

[mackoti]

So our two biggest estimated threats both have civs that go for recon line units, what do we have available to us in the religions/priests that can counter that?

Nothing counters recon.....

[Miguelito]

super ranged mages with super ranged summons counter everything

but we have an immediate problem with a recon unit:


I moved the starting warrior too far west (I was only concerned about barbs not players ), and now it's just the lightbringer and a fresh warrior from the capital (no emergency, planned build) facing him. For uninitiated lurkers, scouts in FFH totally can kill your workers and take your cities
And the next thing we were going to do was to pasture that horse
Very sadly, despite the flood plain tile showing clearly desert in the context menu, we don't get the +20% Malakim desert combat bonus, so it's a 50% roll which we can't consciously take

I rejected the OB and pulled the lightbringer towards the cap, for the warrior to cover the horse next turn. I hope he just moves off (and runs into our warrior coming from the west). I think there might be a chance, he should be expecting a trap if he just runs into our territory. But he'll also want a peek into the capital for sure.

Also Q indicated in the tech thread that we are very close, so that southern spot has high priority. It also has plains incense 2 W from the ivory, which is a bonkers tile. I still don't see how we'd setup a second city there though...
Also if that is Q's copper he might just settle on that forest hill if we plant on the ivory.

[Miguelito]

Q had announced in the tech thread that itwould be bad, but I didn't expect that bad:


Curious if this slipped through while mapmaking, or is intentional.
Settling for copper is a decleration of eternal war, and I don't think that favours us particularly. Maybe Hopefully we'll be able to pull off on the desert E of cotton? I don't know if Q will settle his second city here; our proximity is a strong incentive, but if he has no food close by...? We are both Cre, so even if he settles Ivory second ring he might get it. Also no hills for a defensive position for us.

After I had brought the second warrior home I offered OB + map trade. He returned simple OB and I accepted, surely it's the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

Second guessing if Runes over OO was a good idea (that lake sits rather perfectly there), but I don't want to throw out 10 turns of research either. Exemplary lost cost fallacy but whatever, there's also a bunch of hills to the west.

[Miguelito]

I'm quite curious how naufragar has sought to balance this setup, considering we are 5 players so bad symmetry. There must be huge hinterlands somewhere, right? But Q is on the southern edge of the map....

oh and of course I moved the settler in that direction but even without it'd be very close, and Q and Bing are as close as well.