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

[Ginger*]

Lurchuip WS this early seems interesting. I know I'd try to greed for 6 cities, maybe he's in a tight spot geographically? Or wants that GE really quickly?

I know you're focused on Auror for his past successes, are there others in the field of players who you consider likely arrivals at the final destination?

[DaveV]

What do we need to explore somewhat safely, also considering we may have to defend Beauxbatons?

To be absolutely safe from spawns of overpowered barbs, you need to occupy all the tiles around the dungeon, so nine units total (they don't need to be combat units, just stand on the tile). Even in this case, the exploring unit can be diseased, enraged, killed outright, etc. I believe there are promotion requirements for clearing a dungeon, and it takes several turns to do it (my answer is vague because I never play with lairs enabled).

"Somewhat safe" is a judgement call; you need some reserve units capable of dealing with a stack of up to five strong barbs.

Edit: also, I meant to add that you are plowing a lot of resources into GPP, which aren't really reflected in the demos. So I'd expect you to be somewhat behind, but you are setting yourself up to bounce back strong later when you cash in your sages.

[Jabah]

I think dungeon are a 3t exploration (but should be written/displayed when selecting the action)

[mackoti]

On quick speed is taking 2 turns , so you strat this turn and finish at the beginig of next turn ad the unit remans without movement. From experience with dungeons(yeah  played a litle SP since the uprising against me), rezults are mostly bad. And you need a unit level 3 i think, i meant with 2 promos as i seen you have 2 of them.

[xist10]

Is this different in EitB ? In FFH2 you explore 1 turn and you can explore more than once - only X of Y results destroy the lair.

And my FFH2 experience where more or less good. You can lose a unit, but in FFH2 a possible result is a GP.

[Jabah]

I think you have 1t exploration for graveyard and low profil lair (maybe dungeons) and long time for high profil lair (unique lair for sure).
Need to check.
(anyway, the exploration duration will be displayed with the symbol.

[DaveV]

Is this different in EitB ? In FFH2 you explore 1 turn and you can explore more than once - only X of Y results destroy the lair.

And my FFH2 experience where more or less good. You can lose a unit, but in FFH2 a possible result is a GP.

Yes, this was added at some point in EitB, probably to keep your "friend" with open borders from popping a stack of barbarian ogres in your back yard.

Here's a link to a detailed description of hut and lair results: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid527971

[Miguelito]

thanks everybody, and in particular Dave for that link. If we want to plan for Big Bad, 2 warriors in the city + 2 on the Dungeon seem very risky... but maybe with 4 units in the city? (2warriors + scout + adept?)

Or we have to put the next city in the southwest for now, for that yummy rice + pig spot. I could live with that. The first adept just finished, and flying eyes will tell us if there is anybody nearby for possible settler races.

[Miguelito]

Amurites being awesome:


The screenshot of what she prophesied did not take, and I don't want to replay for fear of reconstructing wrong and seeing something I shouldn't, but
-->the Ljosalfar are to our east. 

• coldrain, who is pllaying his first game here, is EXP/ARC and score leader. 
  
• He has one more city than us, which doesn't sound too bad for us considering EXP, but we also only just got started on our next settler. 
  
• TB tells me he is up Hunting on us and nothing else. Pretty clear run for Leaves which isn't surprising at all, but Leaves also takes time so that isn't bad for us. Difficult to tell if he also has KotE? His starting Mana isn't too great so it doesn't seem very attractive, but he must have most of the techs we have. But if Leaves falls in the next few turns it's plausible he invested in that.
  
• He is running God King / Nationhood / Apprenticeship, no Agri (and no Calendar). Despite this he has a lot more food than we do.
  

--> there is another gold EEN (?) of the eastern rice. If we want to grab it we should move the Dungeon city 1 or 2N (which also means we wouldn't have to clear the dungeon immediately). That means we lose first ring cotton. We are not too desperate for happy because we don't have that much food anyways. Either the city builds a stupid monument, or we get cotton further north because there there's also

--> Tomb of Sucellus with Life Mana, which is apparently what we're supposed to fight over. Life mana is very good if someone goes for undead and unexciting otherwise (still provides Cave of Ancestors bonus). Ljosalfar already have it from the palace, so coldrain might be more interested to look in the other direction. What does the Tomb do anyways? Can it be explored? Could we somehow change the mana type? (I think with the Pyre we can - explore it until it's destroyed, build a mana node, dispel, then build a different node?)

As I said, annoyingly the screenshot didn't take, I'll provide one next turn with dot map variants.

I do have coldrain's graphs, and demos while we're at it:








Those are concerning. I am rather unhappy with my city management, in particular Durmstrang has worked some bad tiles mroe times than I would have liked, and now the problem is reversing - it's size 4, has 3 good tiles and the bronze mine incoming (finally), but also really should work 2 sages. I guess it might be best to eat some lost turns on sages and grow to 6 asap.

The other majour challenge is balancing expansion and security. Sybill, together with the mage guild cost 100h, but I must say I really enjoy the vision. The Pacifism malus is also felt here. I think we probably should lean more towards settlers and less towards units for the next dozen or so turns. That means no training yard after BW for example, even though we'd have some lovely warriors for upgrading.

Also a couple of annoying smaller mistakes. Beauxbatons however is lovely, with wheat farm, cow pasture, and gold mine up already and working.

The GNP spike from last turn is working 2 gold mines and 4 sages, 2 (or 3?) of whom I fired this turn however, which gives us the demos you see.

All of this will make more sense with overview shots next turn

We have had some nice barbs results, killing a warrior on defense, a skeleton on offense for a 10XP warrior, and catching a C2 lion with the scout, who is also 10XP now. I'm seeing if we can sacrifice a warrior or two to catch a C2 polar bear that's roaming in the east. Sadly I learned that a lion cage requires a Carnival, so no easy solution for culture here. A dancing bear however doesn't require anything, would just be sad to sacrifice a C2 bear....

[DaveV]

You can't explore the Tomb of Sucellus (easy to miss in the wall of text lair exploration explanation: "epic lairs (Pyre of the Seraphic, Bradeline's Well, Broken Sepulcher, and Maenalus)"; that's a comprehensive list of the epic lairs).

Tomb of Sucellus gives life mana, +1 happy to cities within 3 tiles, and a healing boost. Decent but certainly not worth starting a war over.

Floating eye vision is really nice to have, it lets you see hostile units from a *long* distance and therefore skimp a little on your troops. Plus the comprehensive map info lets you plan your cities with nearly complete knowledge of their surroundings.

How far are you from Sorcery? If you have a Spirit II mage or two, you can pop borders in any city for the low, low cost of having one of those mages sit in the city for a couple turns. And yes, adepts/mages are expensive to build but they can dominate the battlefield like no other unit.

Edit:
Oh, and I found the level requirements for exploring lairs:
Shipwreck: minimum level 1, delay 1
Barrow, Ruins: minimum level 2, delay 1
Dungeon, Goblin Fort: minimum level 3, delay 1
Epic lairs: minimum level 4, delay 3