[SPOILERS] Team Reddit Must Die

[TheBold]

Yea, just like we'll win the game tomorrow.

[Hart]

I've been at work all day! Its not like I get paid for this you know.

[Hart]

(to my team: I deleted a lot of extraneous signs from the map while taking these screenshots, because they were either seriously outdated and messy, or discussed plans that I'm not sure are applicable anymore; discussed in the "future plans" section)

State of the Game at t47:
Judging from scores, we are a bit lot behind the curve. I think that the leaders might have more than 3 cities up? Those are high scores - I could try to use the score logs to calculate what they are but I'm tired and lazy. I'm also not used to playing on quick in FFH2/EitB, so I have no idea what a decent time for 1st/2nd/3rd settlers is. I usually run on the assumption that t30 or so is a good time for any speed, but now I'm not so sure...

We're definitely behind in tech. We haven't leveraged our investment in cottages as much as we should have. In hindsight, we perhaps could have ignored that, in favour of Calendar, and Agrarianism.

Khazad

Sorry this image is a bit lame, I could have sworn I had a more consisten/heplful one but Civ was playing up.

I'm not particularly confident in how we've played the khazad for this opening.
The idea is that Khazak can focus on commerce (those cottages) and use the Pigs and one flood plain farm for growth, borrowing hammers from Halowell when needed. Halowell can use the remaining flood plain farm and the mushrooms to grow and populate the many hills in it's big fat cross.

As for actual micro of the city, I'm not sure I've done the best job. I need more happiness to counter the -2 happy from the vaults in order to grow the city. With our beeline to grab WoTE, that doesn't leave us very many options, so I'm building a Pagan Temple. I'll probably build another worker and my next settler after that.

Halowell has been building a worker for the last 10 turns, and so just now is entering a growth phase. While the borders do need to pop, I'm not sure that it's critical at this point. I suppose, in the absence of something more useful to build then it'll do while the city grows.

Expansion for the Khazad seems to be a bit of a problem. They need cities with reasonable production, but the only hills seem to be very close to the capital. More exploration required to sneak around the borders.

Hippus

The horselords aren't very horsey at the moment. In fact they're getting all their stuff trampled on by barbarians. Very annoying. I lost an 84% odds battle 2 turns earlier, losing one of our COMPLETELY EXPENDABLE 5xp warriors. (If you can make them in 1 turn with overflow, I don't know what make them any more expendable. That overflow itself is awesome, too! We should build it up for something really useful.) While I was concerned that we had moved into conquest too early for it to be really useful, I'm glad that we have, because now our other civs (and cities) can focus on purely on expanding.

At some point we made a very nooby mistake, and let Altheriol-What-a-Stupid-Name grow past it's happy cap. That said, Altheriol is probably the best city we have right now, across the team.
It hasn't been a huge problem, but I want to find them another point of happy ASAP. Unfortunately, they've already been swapped out of Religion into Nationhood, so a PT won't solve the problem. I would happily put a Winery on my other wine resource and give it to them, but we can't trade resources yet because we haven't got Fishing... I think all we need to do is expand to the point where our borders meet - then we'll have trade connectivity.

Conrod Mor is still in the growth stages. Building an Elder Council because of Conquest limitations.
...Why aren't we building a Monument first? This seems very silly.

Sidar

(These dark grey borders are difficult to look at...)
The Sidar are in a bit of a tight spot! If the two warriors defending <city> lose their fights, then we could be screwed a little bit. Otherwise, Sidar are doing pretty well. Could use more Elder Councils, though. And Hunting. And Knowledge of the Ether. Perhaps the Sidar's typical strategy doesn't really fit with our tech strategy after all?

For so many farms, these cities sure haven't grown. Building a Herbalist in Celo to counter the fact we didn't settle on a river, and haven't got any forests to counter negative health from population.

Vetus was only just founded a half-dozen turns ago, so is quickly trying to build an Elder Council.

The Sidar are probably the civ I have done the least planning for. Honestly not sure what to do with these guys other than expand...

Plans for the Future:

Well. As always, tech to Arete, get the Mines of Galdur, share around the iron, and go kill some things. The questions now are 1) what techs to get after we grab WoTE, and 2) where do we build the Mines?

In our discussions, Roars had suggested a point south of Khazad territory with a lot of forest tiles. I forgot that chopping only contributes 8 hammers in EitB. so at best, you're lookng at 80 hammers, out of [strike]700[/strike] 469 hammers. Still needs a huge investment in normal production. So, I'm guessing Halowell is the best bet. That locks Halowell out of production for quite a few turns... and unless we find another good production site for the Khazad, then I don't know what to do about that.

As for tech, our previous discussion led to this:
Mysticism-->WotE-->Animal Husbandry + Exploration-->Arete.
If we can spend the next 10 turns or so focusing on economic growth instead of just expanding, then we might be able to sneak in Calendar in there as well.

I think that's why the other teams have grown much quicker than us (aside from the Calabim using River of Blood on t1). Particularly for the early game, where every extra food is made more useful by the lower food requirements in EitB, Agrarianism is very, VERY useful. We would have also unlocked a lot of commerce tiles (an extra 10 commerce/turn in Vetus), AND we would have higher health and happy caps pretty much across the board. Khazad is the only civ with happiness in the capital above the baseline 5.

Other problems: we need to start communicating more. Until about 10 turns ago we all seemed to be leaving signs/notes for turn players to follow for worker micro. But since then we've just been playing by ear. Time for that to change!

These workers, having finished that corn farm, should move to farm the SE river tile next turn.

[TheBold]

>...Why aren't we building a Monument first? This seems very silly.

Because we don't need additional tiles there. With conquest on, farms are as good as mines. And with the food surplus, it'll be good to throw up a scientist.

I think after we get WOTE we can get calendar with AH and Exploration.

With a few more hippus warriors, I think they could be sent to the sidar to help them out. Khazad + Hippus are much closer together than the Sidar are.

[Hart]

And a normal turn report. I'll try and do more of these from now on.

t48
Khazad:

• One of our warriors attacked a barb last turn, and won. He has pulled back to Khazad to heal.
  
• A worker has finished another cottage on the plains tile east of Khazak. A warrior has been sent to protect him from the barbarian nearby. Hopefully the RNG will be kind.
  
• Our other warriors have pulled into Halowell to garrison, and workers have moved to mine the forest hill east of the city.
  
  A question: is having units garrisoned in cities a "deterrant" for barb units? Or does it not really matter?
  

Hippus:

Hippus needs a bit of assistance, and quickly. The last barb next to Altheriol died against the walls, leaving both of those garrisoned units injured.
Another Goblin has appeared to the South! A warrior has moved to cover the worker while he mines that tile.

With a reduced barb presence I've decided to move the Settler out. I can't quite recall, but the plan was to settle near the spider attack (is that wise, without BW to chop out the jungle?), so I moved him to the hill, 1 tile from the barb, and moved the warrior 1 east of the barb. He's right next to the last know location of the giant spider, but inside the borders, so his only threat is the barb. I also queued up a scout, so we can actually see the giant spider, and if he doesn't die, get some more exploration going on.

This shows the intended plan of movement, unless we change our minds.

I noticed that at 100% the Hippus are at a -5g deficit. I'd like to shave as many turns off WotE as possible, so I switched to 0% this turn for +16g. That means we can run at 80%, losing 2g/turn for at least 8 turns.

Sidar:

The barb forces still haven't attacked. This is good, because that means our warriors just get more fortified. Workers moved to farm near the river. (WHY are forest only worth 8 hammers?! GAH)

I really wish there was a way to do quick vector overlays with a program that didn't have a shitty interface.

[Hart]

Why aren't we building a Monument first? This seems very silly.

Because we don't need additional tiles there. With conquest on, farms are as good as mines. And with the food surplus, it'll be good to throw up a scientist.

Good points. I've noticed that the Hippus aren't doing that well economically...

I think after we get WOTE we can get calendar with AH and Exploration.

Yay. Edit: I'd like to point out we did shave a turn off WoTE. 5 turns to go.

With a few more hippus warriors, I think they could be sent to the sidar to help them out. Khazad + Hippus are much closer together than the Sidar are.

That's good, but I've also noticed that the Hippus are up against their unit upkeep limit anyway. -5 gpt is not good! I peeked at the finance screen and it says free support for 6 units, so it looks like 3 per city. Once the third city goes up there shouldn't be many problems. Just expand expand expand.

One thing we definitely should have been thinking about in more detail:
[SIZE="4"]HOW HAS THERE BEEN A GREAT ENGINEER BORN ALREADY?![/SIZE]

Lurkers: what's the first building that enables engineer specialist slots? Isn't it far out of reach at this stage of the game?? If so, that means there are epic lairs in the game. Which is ridiculously unfair seeing we lost all our scouts by turn 15.

[Merovech]

There are no announcements for great people from lairs and events.

[TheBold]

Couldn't it have been from that golden hammer world spell the mud golems have?

[TheBold]

Also, we CANNOT SETTLE THE SPIDER SPOT WITHOUT 2 WARRIORS AS ESCORT

That lets 1 warrior die on the move before settling and negates the ferocious spider.

[Hart]

There are no announcements for great people from lairs and events.

I thought this was the case. The only building that enables Engineer specialists is the Forge (or Dwarven Smithy). This is one spot too far in the tech tree for me to believe this, but...

It's not a wonder because we would have seen the notification - but the only wonders that enable Engineers are the Tablets of Bambur and the Mines of Galdur. The Bone Palace gives +2 Great Engineer points, but we haven't seen the notification for it either.

Couldn't it have been from that golden hammer world spell the mud golems have?

All that does is make a "Golden Hammer" in each of their cities, which is an item that gives +1 attack strength.

So I'm guessing that someone got an event or a Supplies from an epic lair that let them build something that gives engineer GPP.

On the settler - I'm aware of this. Patience is all that is required.