[Spoilers] What's Sheaim to do? Irgy controlling Tebryn

[Irgy]

Kinda saw the earlier discussion over Sheaim leaders and I just happened to notice and absence about the C.Librarius. It is pretty much a "Core" wonder critical to Sheaim play. It's a pretty large map, so the importance of free Mage guilds for möbius witches cannot be clearer...

I once had the same discussion with a MP buddy of mine over the Sheaim leaders and we kinda agreed that:
Tebryn is good in the long run for highly promoted mages,
but this lead would be somewhat lost if they weren't able to control the Librarius, which leads to having a much smaller pool of witches to begin with.
Personally, if I had a Sheaim neighbour which I would eventually end up in a conflict with, the Librarius, though not the most useful wonder, might be something I would consider rushing just to deny them that advantage.
Ozzie on the other hand gives u a good chance of getting those critical wonders over your opponents, such as the Pillar, Guild o' Hammers, or even the Hall of Kings to culture push with Sac the Weak specialists. You'd be neglecting military techs in favour of Econ techs for Planar-spawning buildings, so you get a good chance of completing these Wonders first.

For Os-Gabella yes, for Tebryn not so much. The Catacombs cost 401 hammers on quick. Mage Guilds cost 80 hammers, but are also produced at double speed (thanks to Arcane), making them effectively 40 hammers. So, building the catacombs costs as much as 10 Mage Guilds, 11 when you include the one you need to build it in the first place. Not such great value compared to simply building the Mage Guilds then. It's not that simple I know, but you get the point.

I will certainly build plenty of mage guilds though, don't worry about that.

For Os-Gabella, she gets a 50% bonus on the wonder, and no bonus on the Mage Guilds, so it only costs an equivalent of less than 4 all up. In her case I'd agree with you.

[Selrahc]

Personally, if I had a Sheaim neighbour which I would eventually end up in a conflict with, the Librarius, though not the most useful wonder, might be something I would consider rushing just to deny them that advantage.

Heh.

Uh...

So if you were next to the Sheaim, a faction with probably the most powerful unit in the early game in the Pyre Zombies, you would decide to rush to a non-military tech in KoTE, and then dump loads of hammers into building a wonder that wouldn't help *you* at all. Just to piss them off...

Sounds like a winning strategy.

Ozzie on the other hand gives you a good chance of getting those critical wonders over your opponents, such as the Pillar, Guild o' Hammers, or even the Hall of Kings to culture push with Sac the Weak specialists.

Why are the Sheaim going anywhere near those techs? Engineering? Taxation? Feudalism? Seems very far off the beaten track. If you're rushing to those techs, then you aren't playing to the Sheaim strengths. If you aren't rushing those techs, then your industrious won't help you get the wonders against someone who is rushing those techs.

[Heisenberg]

Hehe... sorry if I didn't really justify them properly...

Quote:
Personally, if I had a Sheaim neighbour which I would eventually end up in a conflict with, the Librarius, though not the most useful wonder, might be something I would consider rushing just to deny them that advantage.

Heh.

Uh...

So if you were next to the Sheaim, a faction with probably the most powerful unit in the early game in the Pyre Zombies, you would decide to rush to a non-military tech in KoTE, and then dump loads of hammers into building a wonder that wouldn't help *you* at all. Just to piss them off...

Sounds like a winning strategy.

lol~ I guess I was thinking of something else when I meant "neighbour". Not neighbour as in culture-to-culture neighbour, but near enough to eventually hamper each other's expansion after some poor civ in between gets killed off haha.
That, and if I were to hit kote anyway, like any arcane leader, or those with somewhat useful adepts like Luchuirp, Balseraphs.

Why are the Sheaim going anywhere near those techs? Engineering? Taxation? Feudalism? Seems very far off the beaten track. If you're rushing to those techs, then you aren't playing to the Sheaim strengths. If you aren't rushing those techs, then your industrious won't help you get the wonders against someone who is rushing those techs.

Why wouldn't they? Engineering for additional road mobility, and Guild of Hammers. I'm assuming you aren't going for Smelting+Ironworking just for Iron, so the Guild solves the forge issue.
Besides, on the way down is Mathematics (Gambling houses for revelers).
Taxation nope if you are going Aristofarms, but yep if you went cottaging. (this game wise probably the former)
Feudal is pretty much useless in MP with humans, unless you are Calabim, so nope, not gonna rush for it, but anyone who did it randomly for whatever reasons would normally give it up in trade for other techs--in which case if you checked that he doesnt really have a headstart on Hall you might as well go for it. (And yep, this was a point that came up, but we were discussing about general games with AI in them...so thats where feudal came in.)

[Heisenberg]

For Os-Gabella yes, for Tebryn not so much. The Catacombs cost 401 hammers on quick. Mage Guilds cost 80 hammers, but are also produced at double speed (thanks to Arcane), making them effectively 40 hammers. So, building the catacombs costs as much as 10 Mage Guilds, 11 when you include the one you need to build it in the first place. Not such great value compared to simply building the Mage Guilds then. It's not that simple I know, but you get the point.

I will certainly build plenty of mage guilds though, don't worry about that.

For Os-Gabella, she gets a 50% bonus on the wonder, and no bonus on the Mage Guilds, so it only costs an equivalent of less than 4 all up. In her case I'd agree with you.

Yep, I'd agree with that. But its a pretty large map, so you'd have quite a few cities coming in later. Later on as you conquer new cities with rebelling populace you'd probably be doing public baths, gambling dens, and once those are up you'd probably want to start on the gate to get your succubus and revelers, so the Librarius would save you some time there.

I get the general idea about the "uselessness" of the Librarius and I'm not exactly asking it to be rushed, but just that it be done some time down the line before someone else gets it.
Building mage guilds are pretty much pointless too--you only need 1 anyway since u arent going to be spewing out adepts non-stop at the start. So mage guilds only come in useful -after- the gates are up. And gates are useless too without other planar buildings--so you only build gates when you at least get carnival, baths and maybe then you do it with the guild, plus or minus that gambling den.
So either way you're stuck with 1 mage guild in say your capital till middish game when your other cities start on the gates.
By then you might as well do the Librarius in your capital--which was what I meant too in my other post about denying the Sheaim the Librarius. I wouldn't rush it early either, but somewhere down midgame just before it is approximately worthwhile for the Sheaim to go for it you can always rush it before him.

As for Sacrifice the Weak, it is indeed awesome, but I find you can often end up with simply too much population and be limited by happiness instead. I'd like to run it sooner, but I do still think holding back the Infernals is wise. If summoned too early they can actually be quite a menace. I also plan to have Deception when I summon them, so as to get a partner for the Undercouncil, so that will hold it all up too.

That's where the whip cracks again!~ it does help to get those newer or captured cities with less hammers get those key buildings up fast.

I guess the Infernals are a threat to everyone equally so... if you don't have too much empty space nearby that he might just decide to appear right next to you, you pretty much are safe.
And if he does... you should probably have Rosier, a stack of PZs and Ritualists right at his doorstep. If you don't wait too long there's no way he can get enough XP to get promoted, and its only the infernal's initial army that is a threat--he isn't going to have any hammers at all to get anything built out fast.

The thing I'm concerned about is that diseased corpses are undead. One problem is that they cannot be hasted, and simply won't keep up with the mobility+hasted mages I plan to have. The other reason I'm concerned about being undead is that almost every opponent in this game has life mana, which could eventually translate into Destroy Undead. That's basically what I'm worried about when it comes to wanting some more living units for support.

Good point, its a pretty life-ly crowd here...

[Irgy]

Yep, I'd agree with that. But its a pretty large map, so you'd have quite a few cities coming in later. Later on as you conquer new cities with rebelling populace you'd probably be doing public baths, gambling dens, and once those are up you'd probably want to start on the gate to get your succubus and revelers, so the Librarius would save you some time there.

I get the general idea about the "uselessness" of the Librarius and I'm not exactly asking it to be rushed, but just that it be done some time down the line before someone else gets it.
Building mage guilds are pretty much pointless too--you only need 1 anyway since u arent going to be spewing out adepts non-stop at the start. So mage guilds only come in useful -after- the gates are up. And gates are useless too without other planar buildings--so you only build gates when you at least get carnival, baths and maybe then you do it with the guild, plus or minus that gambling den.
So either way you're stuck with 1 mage guild in say your capital till middish game when your other cities start on the gates.
By then you might as well do the Librarius in your capital--which was what I meant too in my other post about denying the Sheaim the Librarius. I wouldn't rush it early either, but somewhere down midgame just before it is approximately worthwhile for the Sheaim to go for it you can always rush it before him.

A couple of other things worth mentioning:

At any given point in time, I'll want to have some Mage Guilds already. The first I build will be followed by a string of Adepts, if I built the Catacombs early I'd still want to build it elsewhere so as not to delay the Adepts. I'll also build one in any city that has a Planar Gate. So I either need to have additional wasted Mage Guilds, or hold some up while I wait to build it (or to be ready to build it), either way leads to an additional cost.

With the exponential growth behaviour of civ in general, hammers now are worth more than hammers later. The Catacombs are a large up-front cost. Even if I end up with 30 cities later in the game, I still haven't really made my hammers back out of it. I'd estimate it's basically worth, in hammers, about 50% more mage guilds than the number I get when I build it, no more, regardless of how many cities I might end up having.

I guess the Infernals are a threat to everyone equally so... if you don't have too much empty space nearby that he might just decide to appear right next to you, you pretty much are safe.
And if he does... you should probably have Rosier, a stack of PZs and Ritualists right at his doorstep. If you don't wait too long there's no way he can get enough XP to get promoted, and its only the infernal's initial army that is a threat--he isn't going to have any hammers at all to get anything built out fast.

I'm actually not worried so much about Hyborem killing me directly. What I'm worried about is him starting at the far end of the map, and growing quite strong by the time I reach him.

Hyborem snowballs like no-one else. He starts out with just two settlers and everyone else well established. A small though powerful army, no economy, very little population. However, if he can take someone by surprise and capture a few cities, things start to change. If there's also a war going on that's supplying him Manes, he can grow quite big quite quickly. And by not needing food, his cities are twice as productive as anyone else's.

So if he does start far away, and uses his starting units to make some quick gains on someone distracted and/or underprepared, he can very quickly get out of control. That's what I'm most afraid of.

[Heisenberg]

So if he does start far away, and uses his starting units to make some quick gains on someone distracted and/or underprepared, he can very quickly get out of control. That's what I'm most afraid of.

That does eliminate some rivals too doesn't it~

I might argue that it would impact you least since you are the only one "prepared" for him, and not the other players so you are affected least.
If he starts far off, his neighbours would have to suffer the ill-effects of hell terrain.
If he's near... you could even ask Rosier to go demand Iron out of him.

As for manes... I seriously doubt too many players would be helping you drive up the AC with evil religions =D

[Irgy]

Not much of note. Another pointless religion/astrology event:


The settler for the copper city is finished. It came out with a bunch of promotions, which had me a little confused at first. The Sheaim palace comes with chaos mana, which in turn gives a small chance for every unit built of being mutated. Apparently it can even happen to settlers. It also chose an amusing pair of mutations:


Heavy and light, eh? That makes, um, perfect sense I'm sure. As you can see, the combination is a net profit on the whole. Mutations are generally more good than bad, but it's a mixed bag on the whole. It was good in this place, got the settler in place a turn earlier. Although to do so, I had to build a road with the workers for a turn, meaning they can't start on a mine until the next turn. So it's a turn working an unimproved tile, not that spectacular.

Oh, and some good news - one of the unrevealed tiles turned out to be more gold! Right next to the other one, what are the odds. If only I could get enough food to actually work both somehow (before sanitation anyway)...


I've committed myself to waiting to revolt to both Slavery and Aristocracy together. So it didn't really matter which order I researched them in the end. Tongurstaad will reach unhappiness before then, and is working citizens, but it's not worth a whole extra turn of missed production and commerce to do something about it.

[Heisenberg]

Even with Sanitation, with Aristogarian and 2 farmable plain tiles you're only gonna be able to work on one gold.

I'm guessing you settled to hold the copper spot? I might have opted for the plains hill 1N though, it's a little near the borders to settle on desert.

[Irgy]

Even with Sanitation, with Aristogarian and 2 farmable plain tiles you're only gonna be able to work on one gold.

No, with Sanitation I'll be able to work both. I'll get 3 food each from two farmed plains tiles, plus the two bonus food in the city tile gives me 4 excess food with which to work both. In fact I can technically work both now, since I'm running Agrigarianism but not yet Aristocracy, but that will change shortly.

I'm guessing you settled to hold the copper spot? I might have opted for the plains hill 1N though, it's a little near the borders to settle on desert.

I settled there to put the silks in the BFC. There's no resource tag marker on it in the screenshot, but you can see the silks SSE (where the road goes) if you look closely. Note that although the city tile was previously a 2 hammer tile, when I settle the scrubs go and it's back to 1 hammer even with the resource. However, if I manage to convince WarriorKnight to lend me water mana at some point it will be back to 2 hammers.

All in all, this city gets me access to 3 new resources. Copper for military strength, and two happiness resources which will really boost the value of my existing cities.

My next planned city by the way is going to be in the southeast, with bananas, clams and lots of jungle to chop.

[Irgy]

Some more diplomacy. Negotiating over city sites. WarriorKnight has made some thoroughly reasonable requests, which I've agreed to. However, I'm running out of mana nodes so I've tried to recover one diplomatically. Not sure how it will go.

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Hi Irgy

Congrats on getting your 4th city and securing copper. That ought to be a nice boost for your flaming zombies.
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Thanks, it should really help us against the skeletons and goblins in the area. The zombies seem to be particularly resiliant to their attacks. It might help us explore a bit further afield in the northeast too.
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Has anything interesting recently happened to you? Nothing much has happened to me recently (It's been forever since I've had an event even though we apparently turned Living World on) but hopefully things will start getting interesting soon. The Elves have had a lot going on, as you undoubtedly know they got their Hero and religion on the same turn which is quite impressive.
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No, we've been a bit quiet mostly because nothing really has happened. Founding Graelingvig was about the peak of recent excitement for us. Oh, and we found some mushrooms on a hill, that was good, but otherwise we've just seen starsigns of gods who show us no favour. There's some political unrest brewing though, which will likely become another revolution shortly.

The elves must be pleased with themselves at least. Are they planning to do much with their new-found hero, or just sit and defend their forests?
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Anyway, I wanted to tell you about where I plan to place my border cities with you. I'm probably not going to settle either city in the near future, but since you had the good faith to inform me of your settling plans, I will do the same.

Firstly, I'm probably going to settle a city in Letum Frigus valley. I know before I said I wasn't going to, but I hope that it won't be too much of a problem. I'm probably going to settle 6W1N of Tongurstad. That means that Letum Frigus will probably be under your control since it's 3rd ring to me but 2nd in yours, but given our Ice mana treaty that doesn't really matter.
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I was calling that 4th and 3rd ring, but maybe your terminology is correct. The spot you mean is a plains hill, and would place cows and dyes in the BFC, correct?
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As for the northern mountain pass, (We really need to start naming the different areas of the map) well I'm not convinced yet exactly where I'll be placing my border city but the most likely place will be 5N2E of Graelingvig. That leaves both of the gold resources to you, but since I have another native source I'm not that fussed about them.

Like I said before, I'm not quite certain yet when I'll be founding those cities but I thought I should let you know where I eventually plan to place them. Hopefully you won't try and block me from these sites just because I shared this information with you. If you don't have any problems with them, then it will be a pleasure to co-operate with you and your empire.
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Thank you for the communication with regard to your settling. Your suggested sites are reasonable, and certainly closer to your area of influence than ours, so I can make no reasonable complaint.

There is just one issue that concerns me generally, which these two proposed locations highlight particularly. We've been notably unfortunate with the location of mana nodes on this map. We have one in our eventual control southeast of Letum Frigus, but that's it. Your city north of Graelingvig claims one mana node, and the city in the Frigus Valley blocks me off from the only other node I'm aware of, just to the west of that location (just outside the city's borders, and 3SE of the Tomb of Sucellus).

This lack of mana nodes is not a problem in the short term, but in the long run it's something I'm going to have to rectify. One thing which would I would greatly appreciate is to be able to settle a site 5W1S of your proposed location (3S1E of the Tomb), which could then access that mana node. It's not a great site, there's corn but no way to irrigate it, and mountains otherwise, but it would gain access to the mana node (and not overlap with your proposed site at all). It is technically blocked off by your proposed location so it's hard for me to argue that it's in my sphere of influence rather than yours, but as I've said before our relative starting locations leave me hemmed in somewhat so if I don't at least request some concessions I'm going to end up quite squashed.

Best wishes,
Irgy Arbandi
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