This thread offers the reader what is perhaps the most detailed consideration of the issue of mixed marriage in centaur fiction. It will recount the marriage of the nobleman Mardoc and Irgy, the daughter* of Mr Ed and Xanthos. In this marriage between two people "of good birth and lineage," who are carefully established as equals in all but species, we will carefully bring together what we see as the best of the two cultures.
"Horse lovers often enjoy a good read where their favourite animal features highly." - http://www.suite101.com
"For writers of any genre, using an animal as popular as a horse can be a major stumbling block for the inexperienced ..." - fantasy.fictionfactor.com/articles/horses.html
We'll be running this as a two-part team, as illustrated below**:
* This is now the second spoiler thread intro in which I imply I'm female. I'm starting to wonder myself now...
** Image stolen shamelessly from this blog. Which no doubt stole it from somewhere else anyway.
So, on to serious (sorta) business - what are we doing here? Well, it all started with a PM from me to Irgy...
Mardoc Wrote:In the event the settings permit for the PBEM4 repeat, are you interested in working together to try to prove your Basium point? I'd be happy dedlurking until we split the civ, and take whichever half you don't want.
Here's some random information we want easily accessible:
The password:
Code:
Marcurians
A worldbuilder sim of our current knowledge for test purposes:
While we went through the organizational phase, we had some chats about how to best (ab)use Basium, preferably to the point where a human Basium is banned from all games after this .
And if we can't pull that off, then we learn something too.
Rather than dump them all at once, though, I'll spread them out, between such important topics as why I'm the horse and whether anyone will be fooled by the second Kurio thread with a peaceful mouseover post.
Irgy Wrote:So, we're in
In either case though, I'd like your opinions on the settings and civ choices. As far as settings go, I still really prefer the default settings for most things (although of course I've been thoroughly convinced of the wisdom of tech trading off since I asked about it earlier). I don't want to think too hard about what settings make things easier for the particular plan we have in mind, since that feels a bit like cheating (though it's not really).
Civs is a much more interesting question. There's two main candidates for me, although feel free to raise your own.
Capria/Bannor
The obvious choice in a lot of ways. A civ devoted to spamming out religious living (and hence angel-making) units. A civ who's entire set of unique features revolves around the Fanaticism tech already. Capria is Spiritual to support a disciple based army, and Industrious to build the Gate itself faster.
On the whole not all that much needs explaining for this option.
Cardith/Kuriotates
To me in many ways the clever choice. The first thing about them is that they can race to the gate faster than anyone. Partly through the Adaptive trait and in particular switching to Financial, but actually mostly because their high early health and happy caps, and three rings worth of resources, get them off to a great start. Their main limitation hasn't even come into play significantly by the time we could get the gate.
Once we win the race to the gate, the Mercurians provide a number of benefits. The most obvious of which is converting all of the settlements to genuine cities, effectively circumventing the only Kuriotate weakness. We can then do such things as abuse the two sliders to run 100% culture in Kuriotate cities for I expect a surprisingly fast culture victory.
Others
The Malakim have an excellent leader, and an excellent floodplains start on any Erebus based map. They also have a worldspell which gives them a ton of highly experienced religious units.
Beeri is the ideal pair of traits for rushing to the Mercurians, but the Luchuirp are focused on golems which are non-living units.
The Lanun have been suggested before, and have a reasonable economy for doing so. It also gives them some land units. I'd imagine you'd want to try something different though.
On the whole, I think I'd vote Kuriotates, Bannor, Malakim. Though if I was metagaming the list of choices I might put Bannor first - that way if we don't get Bannor we'll get a civ which can out race them to the gate anyway
Interested in your thoughts. Don't feel like you need to write an essay just because I have. If you want to chat about it, I'm happy to do that, we just need to figure out the technology and the right time to do it between our time zones.
So you are planning on using summon angel. Well I hope you can show off one of the summon races because that first one failed. I do blame pb and the late arival of the demon for that.
fire&ice' Wrote:So you are planning on using summon angel. Well I hope you can show off one of the summon races because that first one failed. I do blame pb and the late arival of the demon for that.
The way I see it, there were a few problems with Hyborem in PBEM1. The first, most dramatic, was that going Hyborem was a last-ditch escape hatch plan. Those are better than nothing, but hardly the best example.
The other main problem is that Hyborem in particular depends on there being long drawn-out wars involving the evil religions. Multiplayer does not combine well with long drawn-out wars most of the time, and especially not when it was Pocketbeetle driving the pace.
At least Basium can build and grow naturally, even though the really good units require dead religious soldiers to acquire. Yeah, Agg/Ing/Rai isn't exactly noted as being a builder civ, but it's still better than having to depend on everyone else to do what you want them to.
Mardoc Wrote:... such important topics as why I'm the horse
Because I wrote the post obviously Actually, also because the dude in that photo looks depressingly similar to how I used to (though I never had the beard).
You'll note I compensated by making myself the horse in the text though, very noble of me.
fire&ice's throwaway comment on Hyborem has launched me into another essay on the whole subject, but between other distractions it's taking me a while. I should probably just get on with running test games instead but what can you do...
Hyborem and Basium are two completely different kettles of fish. On top of that, making the switch is a completely different scenario to simply summoning them. And finally, as we also hope to demonstrate, human Hyborem and human Basium are each quite substantially different again. I'll give some thoughts on the different "use-cases" for these guys. I'll start with Hyborem because that's what we're not doing.
Just a polite request; could people playing FFHPBEM5 avoid reading the following. It's not spoilers per-se, since I'm not in that game yet (and indeed may never be), but on the whole the following are thoughts I'd prefer not to share with members of that game.
Summoner
An AI Hyborem is the standard sort of Hyborem, and the one we're most used to from single player. In multiplayer, he's a bit of a novelty, and might take up a bit of land, but as an AI is always unlikely to become a substantial threat.
He's useful as an undercouncil partner, or as an ally to harass or distract your opponents. He will generally be co-operative with the person who summoned him, through the shared religion if nothing else. So he's kind of like a novel little mostly-bonus that comes along with the Infernal Pact technology.
Changing this to a human changes things a little. Rather than being a bonus, it's something of a penalty. The difference is, while AIs are hopeless, humans are always a threat. While the AI will be inclined to view you favourably, a human has no such constraint and is equally likely to ally with whoever takes their fancy. So, while an AI Hyborem can be summoned whenever convenient, summoning a human Hyborem is a risk, and a reason to either delay or avoid the Infernal Pact technology.
Infernal Takeover
This is a strategy whereby you choose any old dump-civilisation, presumably one with early game economic strengths, and plan to summon Hyborem and make the switch. This works particularly well in single-player for a number of reasons.
One key to this strategy is to summon the Infernals as early as possible. They enter the world with a stack of middle-tier units, as well as the Hyborem unit himself. Early on, if used aggressively (again, works best against those stupid AIs) these units can be quite effective in claiming some more territory and, if you're luck, creating some more manes in the process. But wait too long and they're worthless. Similarly, starting with just two settlers and 3 manes hurts more and more the longer you wait.
The second key is to prepare your original civilisation as soft pickings. Why lose all those cities and all that land you had before you made the switch, take it back under your control instead. It's almost like using "Impersonate Leader" for a few turns. Whether it's an AI or a human taking over, there's no sense giving them a well functioning empire. Particularly not an empire capable of outracing you to the Infernal Grimoire!
The self takeover though I can only imagine however is particularly difficult to do in multiplayer. While the AIs will mostly leave each other alone and will be fairly slow to act, other humans would surely see it coming and take the soft target for themselves. You have no guarantees about where the Infernals will appear either, they may be a long way away from the parent civ. Maybe with some clever wording of NAPs you can manipulate the other players into staying away from the abandoned civ though, and leave it in such a state that it's impossible for whoever takes control of it to prepare themselves in time.
With a bit of land from the old civ, and manes from the odd AV unit you kill, you can really get the snowball rolling. Once you catch up to the other teams in development, you can quickly overtake thanks to the very high production and commerce potential that ignoring food can give you.
All in all, this is as close as it comes to picking Infernals as your civilisation from the start.
To compare to what happened in FFHPBEM1, there Hyborem was summoned far too late. Technology and sheer numbers of units dwarfed what the infernals started with, and there was no catching up. PocketBeetle was already in the middle of taking over the abandoned civ, so no hope for getting a headstart by taking land from the abandoned civ. It was an afterthought with no real hope of being effective.
Human Hyborem
This is the scenario where you pick to join the game when Hyborem is summoned.
If you end up taking over an abandoned civ instead, you've probably got a bit of trouble coming your way - it's likely someone is doing Infernal Takeover above, and you're unlikely to be given anything worthwhile. As well as likely to get dogpiled in a race to stop others from gaining too much of your easy pickings. You'll just have to do the best with what you've got.
Hopefully though you get to play as the Infernals. And hopefully you'll get summoned before it's so late in the game that you can't get the ball rolling. At this stage, it's entirely up to you to orient yourself, and start manipulating diplomacy in your favour.
The game mechanics do an excellent job of encouraging Hyborem to act the way he ought to in a flavour sense. You need the evil religions to spread. You need war, and the more death and destruction in that war the better. And there's nothing better than getting into the fighting yourself. You can spam out cities, if there's room, and they will start reasonably productive at 3 population and with a stack of good free buildings, but you can't grow any cities without conflict.
So, and I admit this is speculation, the best thing to do is pick a soft target and have at them. Talk another established civ into assisting you. Even if they get the lions share of the victim's cities, you may still gain a lot more than they do. If the victim has an evil religion, you get some much needed manes. You can get a few from the other aggressor too. And each infernal population is worth two ordinary citizens, as they can work pure production without half the citizens needing to work food to support the others.
Create the right conflicts and you should be able to get the snowball rolling and eventually become unstoppable. Of course it relies on you being summoned into a situation where doing so is possible.
And now, Basium.
Summoner of AI Basium
Again, this is the sort of Basium that we are used to from single player. Basium provides an interesting and novel bonus by bringing a powerful civilisation into the game as your ally, but everything it owns is controlled by the AI. So it's just a matter of trading off between the cost of the gate city (which you will lose) plus the production of the gate itself, and the benefit of a potentially strong AI ally. A bit of a novel bonus but that's about it.
Mercurian Switch
As with the Infernal Takeover, this is the closest you can come to choosing Mercurians as a starting civ. Unlike Infernals, you want your original civ in a good state, so as to assist you as well as the AI is able. However, you need to make sure you have a good amount of land still available to settle into. Build the gate in the best city you have available and use it as your capital. Then quickly get on with settling cities for your new civilisation.
Human Alliance
This is what we're planning here. This is no longer a matter of a small bonus, or a complicated way to play a different civilisation. This is getting the all the benefits of both the parent civ and the Mercurians with none of the costs. And on top of that, it allows all of the cheesiness that becomes available when playing a two civilisation team.
Exactly what sort of tricks this allows is something we hope to demonstrate. But to give a quick summary of some existing ideas:
* Two sets of UUs. Basium's UUs all come late but are pretty awesome.
* Two sets of traits. Some traits only help one civ, but many help both if used correctly. The inability to gift units in FFH counters some of the tricks here, but even still building units which benefit from Aggressive in an Aggessive civ while building Arcane units in an Arcane civ means getting the best of both. Giving commerce cities to the financial civ and production cities to the civ with military traits helps
* A whole new great-person counter, which is a benefit even stronger than the Grigori worldspell.
* City trading, to allow building of two sets of unique and double-speed buildings.
* Two religions, with both sets of religious heros.
* Two different sliders. A couple of obvious uses of this:
- A culture run at 100% culture in the three legendary cities, while still being able to continue research and support the economy in the other cities.
- Building specialised research cities in one civ and gold cities in the other, to run one civ at 100% science and the other at 100% gold. Get the benefits of both Consumption and Scholarship between the two civs.
And of course, a benefit unique to Kuriotates: Completely circumventing the city limit
Ugh. Only two resources visible, and one of them requires hunting, that most overpriced of worker techs. At least wheat is an agriculture resource.
Normally I'd move straight onto the hill to look around, but that will now cost us a turn, because the 4 movement has been removed for "balance reasons", whatever those turn out to be. I hope they're not just "so that Irgy/Mardoc can't quickly get to their vastly superior settling location that we don't want them to find"
Warrior 1E, scout two spaces south and somewhere between one west two east, then decide what to do with the settler from there. That's my guess anyway.
What I really want to know is what's in "Document1"!:neenernee
![[Image: centaurnames.jpg]](http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/7163/centaurnames.jpg)
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Actually, also because the dude in that photo looks depressingly similar to how I used to (though I never had the beard).
