[Eitb spoilers] Miguelito's fortune hangs on a thread

[Miguelito]

So 11 turns to go for KotE, not considering growth which might well shave off a turn with wines incoming.

In that time I want from the capital 1-2 warriors (16h), a settler (145), and ideally the cave of
ancestors (54?), so we start pumping 3 XP adepts right away. It's getting 19hpt in atm. With the cow it'll be an additional 3food, although that should rather be used for growth (so start the settler now while still pasturing), and after that we'll chop an FPH into mine for an additional 2h and 12 from chop. So that might just work out, but it's tight.

Udenarat should just finish the EC and then warriors. So probably better to do horse before wines, but otherwise it looks relaxed.

[Jabah]

'AI's bears and griffons are staying in neutral territory.
Captured ones are doing what the owner wants

[DaveV]

'AI's bears and griffons are staying in neutral territory.
Captured ones are doing what the owner wants

But hidden nationality units will still establish contact, so if you can see the animals and haven't made contact with anyone, you can be sure they're owned by the AI.

For completeness, hill giants also use animal AI and will not enter borders.

Granaries (+20% stored food) are available at agriculture; Smokehouses (+20% stored food) are available at Animal Husbandry. But, yeah, they both suck unless you desperately need the extra health (like after Blight, say).

Which brings me to another FfH concept: the Armageddon counter, or AC. That is a number that the game tracks internally; it is increased by a few random events, by razing cities with good alignment, by building certain units and wonders, and by spreading Ashen Veil religion. It is decreased by a few random events, by razing cities with evil alignment, by building certain units and wonders, and by killing units with a Prophecy Mark (given by the Prophecy of Ragnarok wonder; every unit built in the city containing that wonder will increase the base AC by +1). The base number is scaled by number of civilizations to get the actual AC, which is shown as a red number in a black circle in the lower right of the screen (above and to the left of the mini map; its value is 4 in the latest screenshot). It will show the base number and theoretical maximum on mouseover.

The AC doesn't usually come into play unless someone is working to increase it. Bad things start happening when the AC hits 30 (the following text is cut and pasted from the manual):

• AC=10: Warning, but no effect.
• AC=30: Blight: Causes Temporary large Disease Penalties in every non-Infernal city in the world (up to 15 disease beyond the city population) and does 25% Death Based Damage to all Living Units. Disease is mitigated by Health provided from Buildings (not Forests or other sources). As long as the AC remains above 40, Pestilence can continue to strike at any time. This will also cause disease in every city in the world, but not do any Death damage. Disease will be up to 9 points higher than 1 disease for every 4 population in your city (minus any health from buildings).
• AC=40: Stephanos appears in the world.
• AC=50: Buboes appears in the world.
• AC=60: Yersinia appears in the world.
• AC=70: Ars Moriendi appears in the world.
• AC=80: Hellfire Spawns: This creates the Hellfire improvement on random tiles in the world (2% chance per nonCity flatland tile with no units and no resource), and creates a Demonic Champion (belonging to the Infernals if they are in the game, and to the barbarian state otherwise) on these tiles to defend them. More such units will continue to spawn here if the AC remains high enough.
• AC=90: Wrath: The Avatar of Wrath appears in the world. All Land Domain Living Units who are not World Units have a 50% chance of gaining Enraged.
• AC=100: Apocalypse: kills 60% of the living units in the world, and halves the populations of all cities of leader without the Fallow trait (anyone but Hyborem).

In this game, the only one with any incentive to increase the AC is Auroarcher; any golem units he builds are considered to be non-living units and are immune to a lot of the bad effects from high AC. The Sheaim, not in this game, have a lot of incentive to increase the AC; you can usually count on bad stuff happening when that civilization is out there.

[Miguelito]

plan for next city A1 or oasiswheatcowgold? Whoa that word sort of answers it, but it's a bit difficult to set up. Also up for debate yet if we'd found on those desert scrubs (where the griffon is) or 1E of there? The advantage of the latter would be no defense penalty on the city tile, and some nice green tiles after the border pop, the downside is that I can see the river as a good natural border, and with that plant we'd have to settle on the other side of it (provided we get that far), which is iffy for movement on the frontier.

And yes we have no contact with anyone, those are genuine, free-thinking animals. to Jabah for wanting to scare me.

[Miguelito]

The name Udenarat proved difficult to learn, and I expected the next few not to be better, so I settled for the inevitable theme:




I'm not even that much of a fan, but my son very much is, so I'm fairly well up to date. I have a list of places from the book that can go for cities, but I'll need help occasionally - what is the name of the French school? That should be city #3? And then the prison where they held Gridnelwald?

The real fun will start when we name all the adepts after pupils (wizards in general?) from the books.

I named the first worker Argus Filch, and could name all the others after further Squibs, although the list is unexciting.

I also wanted to name the warriors, scout etc after Muggles, but I couldn't really name very many?

Oh yes, Runes founded - Auror and Q both had significant score increases during the turn in question. I'll guess it was Auror? That's quite a lot of beakers, even assuming he didn't take another worker gtech like we did with BW. The archives show someone getting a big GNP increase very early, maybe he took a gold mine as second tile? Weird that he'd still have better CY then but . The Great Sage might have been popped from a liar. On an EC sage it's 23 turns without and 17 with Pacifism, quite an investment. But it might have helped Auror to get RoK, and being also Arcane he might run a similar strategy to ours. Imo the challenge however is the second GS not the first.



Doesn't look too great, especially losing the MfG crown even after we just connected horse. Somebody has a size 8 capital though (must be Auror, again, with Enchantment Mana?)




Blue or Orange?

Blue has:

• easier logistics; the winery and the wheat farm come faster as we can road the plains instead of hills/oasis
  
• a defense MALUS of 25% on the city tile. That sucks, but I'd be hopeful that this isn't going to be our border city.
  
• enabling of east-of-river cities, which are likely to become the border and would have favourable defense (although no hill spots)
  
• shares incense, although that's low on my priority list
  

Orange:

• allows a fller between it and the capital
  
• has no defense malus
  
• will eventually share some nice river tiles
  
• border cities would have to be over the river (if we get there first). Worse logistics, otoh there are hill sites available
  

[Tarkeel]

I think it depends a lot on when you'll be able to push further east across the river, which likely won't be the next city I believe? Orange does seem to be the better spot, but you'd then have to make sure you get another city east of the river.

[DaveV]

The Great Sage might have been popped from a liar.

An amusing typo.

Blue or Orange?

Tough call. Orange does leave space for a filler, but it's going to be a pretty uninspiring city. Orange also invalidates your marked "3" location, but that city could presumably be moved across the river and might even pick up something yummy in the fog. I'd lean toward settling whichever one is easier to settle and support in the near term.

what is the name of the French school?

Beauxbatons. I read all the books years ago when my son was reading them, but I had to look this up.

[Ginger*]

Weighing in on blue v orange dot. Depends what we see in the fog, as it stands though the dot east of the river between cotton and rice looks very nice, so I would go blue.

[Miguelito]

Thanks for the feedback, although I fear that I went against the slight majority tendency - after lots of back and forth in the end I went for greed, that is, Orange:


I actually quite like the filler. It shares 3 3f tiles, and can be helpful working capital cottages.
The dot south of the rice would also have invalidated the hill plant SW of the wine, so that's a plus for this dotmap. Hope we get that far - I can definitely see us pushing the 4th city for rice at least.

The price for the plains dot is a later winery (because we lose 3 worker turns moving onto hills). It's pretty crazy how many workers are needed in this mode, between tall unwhipped cities and quick speed. So however much I'd love the Cave of Ancestors, probably the first thing the capital does after settler is another worker. And we may not even go straight for Mage Guild and adepts, just warriors and settler sounds like the more reasonable approach - Durmstrang will get the mage guild and start slowbuilding adepts while working sages, but two cities not contributing to expansion for a while would be overkill wouldn't it?

Beauxbatons.

Just to check if old friend Adrien is still lurking my games - does that literally translate to Lovelywands?

[Miguelito]

We got a money event , Beauxbatons was founded and we're looking at a dungeon. What do we need to explore somewhat safely, also considering we may have to defend Beauxbatons?

The dungeon is actually my preferred next city site. There seem to be peaks east of it. I wouldn't mind if the site is a bit safer.

Auror cast his world spell on 3 or maybe 4 cities. Could be worse? The demos don't look great, but I like our cities and several competitors have early traits so still hopeful.

Hogwarts just finished its Mage Guild. I want one adept for Floating Eye, then the next settler?