Neither of those. We have Currency, Calendar, Iron Working, Machinery. We'll have CoL next turn. We probably need to stop building units and start back on wealth... Golden age coming soon so things should improve. We'll want to be in Hereditary Rule and Bureaucracy by the end of the golden age.
OT4E played early this time so we have a luxury of playing the turn with leisure. We started off by doing the scouting moves in Elkad-OT4E front:
Last night we were crossing our fingers that there would be a big battle around Carthage, but nothing happened. Elkad's stack is still sitting 2 tiles from the capital. Where are OT4E's numids? His power is finally dipping and he does not anymore have the population for efficient whipping, but we are still a bit uncomfortable as we do not know where his power is hiding..
Note the GJ borders in the south. We and Elkad have given him a nice chance to take revenge and he is using it.
In any case as OT4E practically evacuated Hippo, so we take the city..
Our CR II Sword does the job with 58 % odds and Hippo is liberated again. This time hopefully for good..
We are still pondering how we approach the further scouting here and attacking Thaenae. We could road the tile E of Hippo (we have 2 workers with the stack) and put everything NW of the city, but that might make it too tempting for OT4E use his remaining units against us.
***
OH will probably show it in the proper report, but OT4E has 3 triremes near our island cities, which is a bit annoying. We are quite close to caravels, but I guess we are required to still build triremes here + do some dancing around our coastal cities. If we do not make mistakes, we should be fine, but the fact that OT4E has at least one 4-move galley means that we need to pay extra attention
***
I think OH will talk a bit more about our immediate economic plans, but the big picture stays in place. Use the 1st MoM-powered GA for our Astro beeline + grab the relevant civics. That will be followed by a 2nd GA to grab couple of military techs (knights) and hopefully separate us from our neighbors and allow us to grab more land. The latest events put us in an interesting position locally:
OT4E is out of the running and will be eaten
Elkad has invested a lot for this war, lost 2 cities and does not yet have any gains --> he will be weakened
GJ has been weakened in the recent wars
Toku is behind, but unfortunately him staying out of the current war has allowed him to catch up and he will be a bit tougher pill to swallow..
Let's see how far this gets us compared to the guys, who have had a cleaner game and are already snowballing.
Met Naufragar who is doing very well - look at all those cities! Offered open borders.
At sea OT4E's triremes are threatening. But we're really scared of a 4-move galley turning up, so we hold off confrontation for now and start building more boats. I'm pretty sure these won't queue-upgrade to caravels (we expect to get optics in 4-5 turns so they'll be built by then anyway).
Our final troop distribution on the OT border - we'll hold back again this turn. We hope to find out where OT's stack is next turn and then use that information to cause some more trouble.
In diplomatic news no-one accepted my trade offers last turn - - so I offered 2metraninja spices for sugar.
Oh, and I forgot to mention there have been a lot of wars recently - Commodore, plako and Gavagai all seem to be taking cities off each other in the last ten turns or so. This turn TBS took a size 6 city off Superdeath, which we think means he's close to Mackoti and Rusten. That's pretty good news.
OT4E attacked Ivan from the fog with at least two 3-4-move galleys. the fight went like this:
He lost a 70% fight Amphi Numid vs Axe
Won a 73% Amphi Numid vs xbow (3 hits)
Won a 63% CR3 Axe vs Archer (5 hits)
Won a 99% chariot vs axe (1 hit)
Hopefully there are only two fast galleys, and OT doesn't have more amphibious units, but right now BG and Goldeneye are at risk. And in a couple of turns Jade Empire could be at risk. For now we move a crossbow and spear to join the archer in Goldeneye and move our triremes to blockade Baldur's Gate.
Also, but not visible in the log (this was a busy turn!) we got a great engineer (why couldn't we have got one first time around :grr: ) - and Orville starts our first golden age.
That adds 90 beakers to our max science rate. We decided against whipping anything this turn, so we convert to Caste System too and start accumulating points toward the two scientists we need. DA will get the 300, Civ or HA the 400, AC the 500 and Civ or HA the 600.
We settle our first new city for ages. It would have been called Morrowind, but got slotted into our city list in place of Ivan, so we call it Ivan instead. We'll have three turns of artists to pop borders and then it'll work fish.
Meanwhile back on the battlefield we move our scouts and see that GJ has a mini-stack approaching and Elkad moved next to Carthage. Will Elkad take the city next turn? The arrows show 4 Numids that can either hit Hippo if we move to the silver or threaten KotoR. 9 Numids can hit Hippo via the silver road if we stay put, but our stack should cope with that so we stay put.
We've got 2 spears and 2 swords to cover KotoR. Moving our G2 crossbow to the hill NNE of Kerkouane means OT needs to reinforce the city next turn or kill our unit. We also move a stack of 4 spear, 2 swords and 4 crossbows next to Theanea. We wonder if OT will attack us or Elkad or just sit tight.
OT had four 4-move galleys! He tried for Goldeneye, but lost:
Numid vs xbow - 3% (3 hits)
CR3 Axe vs Archer - 8% (3 hits)
CR3 Axe vs Crossbow - 36% (flawless loss)
Then gave up. So how many units does he still have on his boats? And can two immortals defend Jade Empire against them in two turns?
On the battlefield OT emptied Thenae. And moved all his numids to attack a spear/welly/axe trio over here. Presumably he's going to attack Elkad, but we need to be sure we can keep KotoR and Elite safe. So what do we do? How many units do we need to hold Theanae and keep Elite safe?
There's an archer and chariot defending Kerk (we get 63% to kill the archer) and it's going to take a while before Carthage falls. Elkad only has three Hwatcha (with one more arriving this turn).
We met Adrien and Mackoti too. Mack's in a golden age, so tha'll explain the GNP.
I ended up writing this review for Hitru. Whoopsie.
Game: Jade Empire
Released: 2005 (Xbox), 2007 (PC)
First played: 2007 (PC)
Personal rating: * * * * My first BioWare RPG, the heart-warming oriental nostalgia. Would kung-fu again.
TL;DR: Third-person, action-RPG set in ancient China with fantasy elements. Think wuxia.
It would be suitable for Jade Empire to be reviewed after Knights of the Old Republic, since they are both RPG games developed by BioWare and KOTOR was published before Jade Empire, but let’s stick to the alphabetical order.
Jade Empire’s was the first original world to be built by BioWare after they had previously worked only on license games. The world draws heavily from Chinese mythology and the culture of ancient China. The world has some fantasy elements: although magic users are relatively rare, devoted monks or martial artists can perform amazing feats through their Chi energy, and humans live side by side with strange monsters and mystical creatures.
You, the protagonist, are the star pupil of a martial arts master, living in a small village. You get to choose your characters name and gender and choose their appearance from a handful of options. You start humble and embark on an adventure after your village is attacked. During your adventure, you gain friends and gather allies, make decisions and complete a good amount of side quests.
Jade Empire utilizes the same kind of third-person gameplay and ally-gathering elements as KOTOR, but has real-time combat, which makes it kind of an action RPG. As you gain levels, you distribute points between a couple of attributes and different martial arts fighting styles, you know the drill. The only thing missing from a complete RPG experience is an inventory grid. Jade Empire has similar morale system, dialogue system and romance plots that BioWare used before in KOTOR and developed further in Dragon Age and Mass Effect series.
All in all, Jade Empire has a beautiful and rich oriental setting, interesting characters and villains and a quite decent plotline with a very memorable twist.
You can pick Jade Empire up on Steam summer sale for under 4 euros, so if you’re a BioWare fan and can handle the graphics and the now clunky controls, it’s worth experiencing.
I’ll return to write about Morrowind when the time comes. It would have been very appropriate for Morrowind to have been your small, northern fishing village with only little usable land, but I guess it was not meant to be.
Thanks Katinka! Unfortunately OT4E didn't get the memo about our naming scheme. We do have a new city though, which will get called Morrowind once it comes out of resistance. It comes with a free forge, but will be 3 turns before we can use it.
With 4 crossbows, 2 swords and 2 spears we think OT will leave it be. Maybe. We also advanced on Kerkouanne while Elkad bombards Carthage.
To deal with the sea threat we 1-turn a spear in Goldeneye and chop another in Jade Empire sending three immortals that way too. Hopefully the injured crossbow and archer and two full-strength spears in Goldeneye will be enough. I'm expecting three galleys to head for Jade abandoning their trireme guards, but who knows what magic OT4E will come up with next? We think he's got 3 or 4 injured units on the boats, but he's surprised us before...
In foreign news Xenu is running police state while Mack and Toku have Hereditary Rule. Mack also has Vassalage in place. I'd guess he's in a golden age and will revolt to Bureau at the end.
What's going on here then? Elkad's peace with Toku runs out next turn - perhaps he's seen something on the border?
At any rate that's a bit annoying. Our immortals sidle away and discover this. It looks like OT suicided his stack of Numids against Ulsan this turn - he gained 13 WW on his turn (1 win/4 losses, 4 wins/3 losses or 7 wins/2 losses?) Most likely the second since on his turn Elkad gave OT 7 more war weariness - which would mean 3 more units lost and would account for why those 2 workers didn't get captured - I think OT might have one injured Numid in the fog as well as this one. Ww between Elkad and OT is now 53/64
We have a new city! It'll chop into the granary next turn. Fintourist will work out if it should work silver or an artist instead to delay growth until the granary is in place. We're lucky we had lots of open border agreements when Ivan fell, I don't think we lost any commerce (except for the stuff from the city itself.) In other city news we got a Hinduism spread this turn. I'm not sure we want to help Rusten out though, so we'll hope to get Buddhism or Judaism instead. We have a shot at capturing those shrines.
Last turn Hitru burnt a brand new OT4E city and captured Kerkouanne. His combat luck didn't hold out long enough to kill one of OT's 4-move galleys though. Anyway, there's a lot going on here - what's the engineer doing at the island city? Our stack holds Kerk nicely, Elkad got peace with Toku and moved back to threaten Carthage.
Meanwhile Xenu got his shrine and Mack adopts Rusten's religion... In foreign affairs 2metraninja is being dogpiled by Xenu and Adrien, so our spice-sugar deal is cancelled and BG and Goldeneye are unhappy. Fortunately a quick revolt to Hinduism enhappies the BG residents. G just has to take the pain.
Very odd promotions for a spear, but I guess this is how Ulsan survived the onslaught of Numids a couple of turns ago. The sooner Elkad takes Carthage the sooner Morrowind (formerly Thanae ) can work all it's tiles.
We have a caravel! It gets 67% against the triremes, while 2 of our existing triremes get 50/50 due to C1.
We could wait for more support or push our caravel on to threaten the galleys. But we decided that exploring for our astro bulb is a more important task - our explorers will discover what the land to the west contains, then we can load our galleons accordingly. We'll build a couple more caravels before attacking OT's boats. I don't think OT can see this caravel, but attacking the galleys next turn probably isn't a great idea.
Elkad took the walls of Carthage down to 27% and Joey seems to have retreated.
Xenu offered us silk for our spice +35 gold - since Goldeneye is the only unhappy city this doesn't appeal right now. In other news I offered Mackoti open borders last turn and we're getting some very nice trade routes from his monster cities! Hereditary rule is pretty nice. This city was switched to wealth after the pic was taken.
This time hopefully for good.. 
- so I offered 2metraninja spices for sugar.
For now we move a crossbow and spear to join the archer in Goldeneye and move our triremes to blockade Baldur's Gate.
![[Image: jade_empire_screenshot.jpg?psid=1&width=320&height=240]](https://am3pap001files.storage.live.com/y4mG53vzYSbHurosECZnx4jtQGZOOCHGMKsvVvqU-NhYMg-gufAGT5--6gbcrHarVFWJbGul_-tRDUOeZGq6PetPXFaGZSJ7GzeHXICXScZvBEVWnq9FSNa_aPCTkfc5oMmIJ5aY9BXCJgN6cJHYBwsNcqCPeaVMJU90AZuA72LnDqhoTOFnYOhKm1Y9_ph87ISidloMcghCYPmgLYNgyY8ew/jade_empire_screenshot.jpg?psid=1&width=320&height=240)
) can work all it's tiles.
