Anyone up for an EitB SG?

[Brian Shanahan]

Disclaimer: I’m not the best at creating stories but I’ll try anyway.

Sam awoke groggily. Confused he stared at his surroundings, a cold dank cell with only a straw pallet for a bed and a rude table in the corner.  There was no mirror to view his face, but with a growing unease he realised that there was something covering it, a leather mask which stunk of dried blood and sweat.

The gorge rising in his throat he called out for his only companion Ziggy to find out what he got himself into this time.

“Soemthing’s wrong Sam”, muttered the hologram “the computer has no knowledge of this time or place, and we haven’t a clue who you are.”


“Oh boy...”

Ok onto the game:

The initial turn is well discussed, I settled in place, despite the blue dot saying 1 SE. There was a fish which didn’t show.  After a good think I felt SIP was still better as we wouldn’t be going down the sea line for a while.

I also decided not to revolt, we’re in Nationalism, and Pacifism is useless to us and Religion not much better (would have been decent with earlier versions of Cultured Averax).

And on the first interturn, the biggest event of the game:

We meet Rhoanna who decides to settle about five tiles diagonally from us. We’ll be back to her later.

Turn 1:
Settle the city (haven’t renamed it, as I kind of suck at thinking of naming schemes), and start on a worker.  I never do this in EitB unless I’m barb. I went with Agri

We also meet a friendly guardian for our civ:

Now despite walking all around the guardian I couldn’t get the boys to emerge (must be tied to one of the mountain tiles).  A bit of chaos early would have been nice.

Turn 2:

Pop a spectre from a graveyard.

Turn 3:

Get 32 gold from a hut

Turn 4-8:

Sam is so preoccupied with finding out who he is and what he needs to fix that he neglects to take notes. (in reality all I was doing was shuffling units)

Turn 9:

The warrior pops a hut and finds another near neighbour:

Turn 12:

Worker built (two turns early for agri) on to warrior.

Turn 14:

Agriculture>Calendar.  Worker starts farming (all he does all set).  We also formally meet Charadon:

Turn 15:

We get a lighthouse on our one sea tile with the Turtles event. So off the coast doesn’t even hurt us that bad.

Turn 17:

Warrior>Scout. I didn’t want to start a settler on one pop, so picked a scout for the explorations.  Thinking back, I should have just gone warrior again.

Turn 19:

Our wandering scout beats a lion, he’s given C2 as he was wounded near unto death (0.3 health). He’s down south by the cottons.

Turn 24:

Warrior beats a Griffon over west of the Doviellos, he also gets C2 as he was also badly beat up.  I was thinking shock but he’d never get back in time to use it against the Hippus.

Turn 25:

Scout finishes>Warrior, nothing else touched.


End set items:

Resources


Borders


Very Rough Dot map

Badly drawn light blue circles mark the spots.

Big discussion point: Do we rush the Horse fanciers?

Plusses:
we’re AGG so we’re 3.6 starting warriors
They’re so close
We get a second good city and effectively claim a nice wedge of land south of our small starting peninsula

Minuses:
We stunt growth
If it fails, we fail
We’ve PZs available we can do it later

So do we gamble or try to build as far as PZs

Edit:

Well done Brian you forgot the save.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for getting us started, Brian.

Wow, the Hippus are really close. And the Doviello are not that far away either. This is something I have noticed about FFH -- it seems to love generating the various races' starts extremely close together. Given the size of the map, should there really be three civs this close together? It annoys me a bit, but oh well. It is what it is.

It could be a problem for us with the High to Low mechanic, as all three of us are likely to end up stunted for land compared to civs elsewhere on the map. So our transition to the low civ could easily end up being one of our neighbors here. Maybe we should gamble everything on rushing the Hippus and destroying them completely, as a way of avoiding becoming them later?

Also, I am confused about the BAR trait effects. What exactly would trigger conflict with the barbarians for us? And it is only specificially barbarian units that are affected, correct? Not animals?

[Brian Shanahan]

Thanks for getting us started, Brian.

Wow, the Hippus are really close. And the Doviello are not that far away either. This is something I have noticed about FFH -- it seems to love generating the various races' starts extremely close together. Given the size of the map, should there really be three civs this close together? It annoys me a bit, but oh well. It is what it is.

It could be a problem for us with the High to Low mechanic, as all three of us are likely to end up stunted for land compared to civs elsewhere on the map. So our transition to the low civ could easily end up being one of our neighbors here. Maybe we should gamble everything on rushing the Hippus and destroying them completely, as a way of avoiding becoming them later?

Also, I am confused about the BAR trait effects. What exactly would trigger conflict with the barbarians for us? And it is only specificially barbarian units that are affected, correct? Not animals?

It seem's to be an artefact of the two Erebus map scripts. They tend to start civs close together (I'd say in a kind of lore thing).

I know in the original high to low game I was in the answer to a somewhat cramped start was conquest (I'm not sure about the second one, even though I sponsored it).

[Mr. Cairo]

So I'm assuming that I'm up next? I'll be able to get to it after work in 6ish hours, assuming I'm not swept away by the tsunami  (jk, the warning was cancelled after a couple of hours)

Regarding rushing hippus, I'm in favour generally. Getting a unit over there to try and get a glimpse of what they have for defence would be a first step that requires minimum commitment. If it appears too risky we can just go back to the original plan of mass expanding while the barbs aren't a threat.

I've never played with wildlands on. Just how many animals are we talking about? If it is pretty extreme we'll need a decent army just for escorting settlers

[Brian Shanahan]

Yeah sorry for not posting the roster it's currently:

Brian (just leaped into a new body)
Mr Cairo -------->> UP
Lord Parkin ------->> ON DECK
superjm
haphazard1
DaveV


Mr Cairo, re looking in on the Hippus, I've a C2 scout not too far away, and it should be healed up any time in the not too distant future. He'd be a good candidate for peekaboo.

If we rush, it'll be your set that will decide on it.

[Lord Parkin]

Wow, we're really cramped!

I guess with the rush it depends whether spending all the hammers on Warriors is going to get us to first place quicker than just investing those hammers into an army of settlers.

If we do decide to gear up for a rush though, I guess it's likely to be initiated during my set? Hopefully I won't disappoint.

[DaveV]

Regarding a rush: remember that Rhoanna's warriors will be +25% for being in a city, +25% for being fully fortified (and another +25% if her capital is on a hill). We'll need something like three warriors for every one of hers, since ours are only +20%.

Regarding animals: iUnownedTilesPerGameAnimal=25 at Monarch difficulty, and Wildlands supposedly doubles that, so expect two animals per 25 land tiles. And yes, the turn 6 spawn was for Quick speed, so it's presumably turn 10 at Normal.

[Mr. Cairo]

Ok, played 20 turns.
Turn 26 (all my turn numbers are the rightmost ones, so this was the turn the save was on when I loaded): C2 Scout was healed so I sent it towards Hippus. Scout just built in cap I send north.

Turn 27: H borders pop so can't see in without declaring war.

Turn 29: Declare war on H to snipe a Worker, I don't think the civ is necessarily committed to a rush now, but if we do, this seemed like a good start (maybe not). Sniping the Worker seemed worthwhile anyway (not that our Workers have anything to do atm, only worker tech is Agri, and all three farmable tiles are farmed by now).

Turn 30: Have a look in the H capital:

4 Warriors and size 1. A barb is coming down to help us out (or more likely just give free xp to one of Rhoanna's Warriors). I keep that Scout there watching for rest of turn-set. I activate the Gargoyles at Guardians.




Turn 31: The Gargoyles look to mostly be going away from the Hippus

Turn 32-35: Nothing of note, but still no change in # of H Warriors or size of their cap. I've only been building Warriors and growing the cap.

Turn 36: Warrior to the west pops a hut and meets Von Gosam of the Malakim

The hut is good:

Now our Workers have something to do.

Turn 37: Finally a new warrior in H capital. Calendar finishes, I start AH. Partly for the pigs in our cap, but also to unlock Subdue for our Scouts, esp. northern one wandering the tundra. Lots of bear dens up there. I decide to revolt into Agrarianism straight away for the extra food on our 3 farms. It wont take that long to make up the lost turn with the faster growth.

Turn 40: In the north the Scout kills a Wolf and gains a promo, I plan to save it until AH and subdue, then immediately move the Scout next to a Bear. The Scout's already wounded so I decide woodsman 1 is better than C2 for survivability. Then I realise the Bear is guarding a den and wont attack   The barb Goblin suicides into Hippus warrior in cap 

Turn 42: Bear spawns in den while Scout is next door. I fortify hoping for enough xp for another promotion. Rhoanna get's 6th Warrior.

Turn 43: Scout survives bear attack but on low health. Not wanting to waste that promotion, but also not wanting to stay next to the den to heal, I run the Scout away. Right next to a wolf.... C2 it is.    That scout will need 10 xp to get Subdue now.

Turn 44: Scout survives wolf. Event happens that gives us some gold.

Turn 46, Final report:
-Scout to the north is healing.
-C3 Warrior to the west is slowly heading back home. There's a Scorpion in the area, so it's been slow going.
-Hippus cap has 6 Warriors guarding it so far, only just now at size 2. Even if we don't rush them now, I think I've managed to pretty much cripple them by stealing their worker and forcing them to build Warriors. So they'll be an easy target later if that's what ends up being decided.
-We have 4 Warriors in our cap, one of which was mutated to have Cannibal and Blitz. Another Warrior will come out next turn, and with overflow from that one we should be able to 2-turn them for a little bit. I also swapped one of the farms for the unimproved pigs to get the extra hammer needed to get to 10 total so the Nationalism bonus actually has an effect.
-I've built a road to Hippus territory, so it wont be a very long journey getting our Warriors there if we so choose.
-A Gargoyle has come down, hopefully it'll go towards the Hippus cap.
-Rhoanna will make peace right now. A plan could be to make peace while building Warriors, hoping that the Hippus will stop building their own Warriors and replace their lost Worker, or get a Settler.
-If we decide to scrap the rush plan, then we can start building a settler next turn, and continue building them for a while.

Some screenshots from the my last turn:

I don't have anything new to add to Brian's dotmapping, except to point out that tasty floodplains area to the west, although there isn't much food other than the fp's.





Personally I no longer feel that the rush is a good idea. Hippus is now really far behind, and we can build a bunch of settlers from our cap with ease at this point, setting up to conquer the Hippus later. I may be wrong, but I don't think that building a bunch of Warriors and growing to size 6 set us back by that much at all. And the free worker is nice.


Edit: added the save.

Lord Parkin ------->> UP
superjm ------->> ON DECK

[haphazard1]

A worker stolen, plenty of exploration, warriors built, capital grown, and a nice tech popped from a hut. Looks like pretty good turns, Mr. Cairo.

We may need to rush the Hippus now, unless we want to become them and try to dig out of the hole we have created for them. With all those nice flood plains to the west, that might be possible. The Malakim may take most of that area, though. Or were they in a different direction?

[superjm]

Having BAR kinda stings here. 11bpt for a 6-pop city on a river doesn't seem pretty, though given our upcoming settler spam that might not be much of a problem for long. That and popping Exploration mitigates things quite a bit.

I know Charadon has no starting techs and is also BAR but I do wonder how he has less score than a civ with a 2 pop capital. Unless he's 2-popping a settler or something like that.

EDIT - Oh I just realized Rhoanna's cap went third ring on T27 and is probably being reflected in the score now. Not sure how she managed that, maybe popped Ancient Chants and rushed a monument? Or is there an event that gives a monument, I don't remember?