[spoilers] Something something horses - Tasunke of the Hippus

[Sciz]

Right.

uh.

I don't have any time to do anything special in here right now. And maybe not tomorrow either. But hopefully on Sunday!

[Maksim]

Fair enough - in the meantime, have a look at this.

Good luck and have fun!

[Sciz]

okay i'm a bit drunk right now but i'll comment on that pic

not a very good starting location!

uh we've got a river which is nice for an extra commerce for aristofarms, and a riverside wheat is cool. But all that plains is awful. Running agristofarms will make those tiles 2f 3c before sanitation, which is a joke, might as well build cottages with that since we keep the extra hammer then, and actually gain commerce oever time. plains farms with agrarianism is just ugh because of the lost hammer. I hate regular plains tiles.

deers and furs are "lol hunting" which has an insane beaker requirement, it's like calendar resources in vanilla bts, they're not gonna be much help for a long long time.

I'm prolly gonna move the settler to the plains hill NW-W and hope there's anything better ther,e beccause there's no point staying down here since furs and deer are useless to any non-elf civ early on in the game. Also i'm very confused as to where the grasslands are.

Aren't plains tiles supposed to be "warmer" than grassland? So it's like ice->tundra->grassland->plains->desert? But here we are at the bottom of the continent near the south pole, and we only have tundra and plains with no grassland inebtween. Yay! And a bit of desert thrown in, because why not you know?

[Sciz]

(btw that "yay" and the "" was sarcastic if anyone didn't get that)

[Sciz]

i'm also thinking about ways to make my updates better!

one idea i'm having is to just update when i'm drunk, which would be like 4-5 times a week or so

couild work

[Tatan]

Just make sure you're drunk when you do diplomacy, too.

[Sciz]

I moved my settler northwest to the plains hill and...

well.



Plains, plains and more plains. Well except for all the beautiful desert, tundra and ice tiles

Really mediocre area around me. Only two tiles with 2 food or above, the sheep and the wheat. Also the deer after a camp but I need hunting for that which is a long time away.

I have no idea how i'll be able to have a decent economy in my capital. Wheat tile will be the only decent tiles I have, thank God it has a river. Gonna have decent production with my cap on a plains hill for an extra hammer at the start and two plains hills to mine. But ugh, where will I get the food? Not a single grassland tile. Lots of river but that doesn't help when with agrarianism i'll only get 3 food (and lose the hammer!) from the plain tiles. And with aristocracy i'll lose that food, making it a 2f 3c tile! That's pretty horrible, since they won't grow either. With sanitation it'll be alright, but still pretty weak, and sanitation is quite far away. At least I get two mana nodes!

I can't settle right away but that's no big deal. Only three civs founded on turn 0 so it's not too big of a loss.

Checked the settings, and no tribal villages! That's kinda sad. I like popping stuff. Also no unique features, and no acheron. A standard world size with a low sea level, which means there will be plenty of space to expand into. Too bad I have such awful food that it'll take an age and a half to build a settler.

At least no one who's settled so far has great food either, as best crop yield is 4, which means no one is working a 3 food tile. Or I think so anyways. Best production is 4 as well, which must mean settling on a plains hill for 2 hammers and working a 1f/2h tile, a plains forest or a grassland forest hill, or some resource.

And uh yeah I'm supposed to discuss stuff about the various civs and players right? I guess i'll do that next post. Or something.

[Sciz]

[SIZE="4"]Dantski is Ethne the White of the Elohim[/SIZE]

Right. I have never played the Elohim. Well actually I just started a hotseat game with all 6 civs in this game, with myself playing all six of them, but i'm only six turns in so far. Ethne is the only Creative leader in this game, which is something. Her second trait, defender, is pretty useless. It's like protective in BtS but worse. It gives extra withdrawal chance and double speed archery ranges and walls or something like that. Almost negligible. Elohim also has a third trait, Tolerant, which enables them to build opponent's unique buildings and units in cities they capture from them. That's pretty cool I guess. Not that much to choose from in this game though. Centaurs from Kuriotates could be neat. Firebows from Amurites too. My own Hippus don't have anything too exciting for them to take, which is good for me. The Elohim get a bunch of unique units, but I haven't played with them yet so I dunno how good they are. Check warriorknight's thread for PBEM3 or something. Unless you're playing there yourself. If so, don't check it.

Dantski has played in one FFH2 pbem so far, the one that died after like 50 turns, so i can't note anything special there. Also played a bunch of BtS games, he's pretty decent I think. I dunno. Doesn't really matter, I will be equally wary of every opponent in this game.

World Spell removes all units from their borders, and makes it impossible for enemy units to enter their borders for a bunch of turns. Civilopedia in the game says 30 turns, but I thought it was less, like 20 or something. Either way this makes them a very unattractive target to attack, because the first person to attack them will get fucked after building up a big army and then having nowhere to use it for 20 turns or something. I hope i'm not next to these guys. Or if I am I'm definitely gonna make friends because attacking them before they've used their world spell would suck a lot. Unless I could strike them and take them out in one turn which is pretty improbable, even with my awesome mobility horses.

[SIZE="4"]Jkaen is Dain the Caswallawn of the Amurites[/SIZE]

Dain of the Amurites was my second choice. Not for any particular reason though, I've only played with him once, and it was a short scenario a long time ago. Also played Dain as the Grigori in PBEM4 but that doesn't really count. Dain is definitely the best Amurites leader imo. Philosophical is cool for more great people, making getting a great sage early on and stuff. Arcane is great for getting mages and stuff. Amurites play tends to revolve quite a bit around mages. And their hero, which is obtained pretty far in the mage tech line, so Amurites will almost always go heavily into that line. Why wouldn't they? Their hero can give any unit in the civ basic spells. Normally this only gives tier 1 spells which usually aren't that great, but I think that if he uses this ability on channeling 2 units, like priests or mages, they can get tier 2 spells which is much better. Pretty redundant for mages of course, but cool for priests who wouldn't get such spells otherwise.

There are some good tier 1 spells too though, like haste and enchanted blade and other stuff. Summon skeleton for fodder too if he needs it. And other various spells. This means that the Amurites really want to have a peaceful early (and mid) game so they can reach their hero. Their second big thing are Firebows, which are longbowmen replacements and get channeling 2 and fire spells. So with one upgrade they can sling fireballs. I guess this means that Firebows also can learn tier 2 spells from the hero. Cool.

World Spell stops all civs from using magic for a set amount of turns, dunno how many. 10 or something perhaps. Maybe a bit more. Luckily i'm not gonna rely on mages too much. The spell also gives every adept/mage/archmage one experience per upgraded mana node they own. Usually won't be a lot though.

Don't know anything about Jkaen but he's probably pretty decent.

[SIZE="4"]Ichabod is Kandros Fir of the Khazad[/SIZE]

I don't like the Khazad at all. I probably just suck with them though. I just don't understand the vault mechanics at all. Well I do understand them, but I can't play with them. I keep feeling claustrophobic because of the vaults. Basically the vaults require X amount of gold per city to function. If you have too little gold, you get an unhappy face in every city, if you have way too little gold you get two unhappy faces per city. If you have a surplus of gold you get some happiness and a production bonus. These bonuses scale up depending on how big a surplus you have. I think max is like +40% production per city and like three happy faces or something. Anyways to reach this bonus you need an insane amount of gold. The regular amount of gold per city, which gives no bonuses or penalties, is 100 gold. So when you settle your second city you need 200 gold to not get any penalties. That is quite a lot for so early in the game, especially now when no goodie huts are around to get free gold.

So yeah I just don't like the Khazad because of this. Otherwise they have tons of unique units that do various stuff, I dunno really, haven't played them further than a hundred turns in because of vaults. Kandros Fir is a really good leader, he's definitely a top 5 pick for me if we go unrestricted, with Aggressive for strong units, and Financial which is by far my favorite trait for the extra commerce. I guess he might go to festivals pretty early to get the extra cheap markets up for faster gold generation. The Khazad also don't get mages or archmages

World Spell gives them a 10% chance to spawn hills on every tile in their civ. It's pretty weird and can wreck low-food cities if you get a hill on two of your only farm tiles or something. I dunno. Also gives them 25 gold per mine inside their borders.

Don't know much about Ichabod. He's pretty good probably.

[SIZE="4"]Selrahc is Hannah the Irin of the Lanun[/SIZE]

Think the Lanun color is too similar to the Elohim? Deal with it. Anyways Selrahc is mean because he got my top pick. Hannah the Irin was my first pick, but someone else must've picked her as #1 as well, and Maksim's weird way of choosing civs meant that Selrahc who probably chose her as number 2 got her instead. Or number 3 if two people chose her as number 2 as well, but that's improbable. Anyways, I wanted Hannah the Irin because I was gonna gun for Fanaticism and build the Mercurian Gate, thereby summoning the Mercurians as a permanent ally for myself, getting someone here to play it. This was also my idea for PBEM4. Incidentally, this was also Selrahc's idea for PBEM4, which makes me believe that this is what he's gonna do in this PBEM as well. I've given up on this because Tasunke will never win a tech race against Hannah the Irin. Especially not with my start

Anyways the Lanun are pretty awesome. Completely dominant on water maps because they're the only civ with unique naval stuff pretty much. That won't come into play much on this map, luckily. They still get like the best improvement possible though, Pirate Coves. They are built by work boats on water tiles, and they evolve like cottages, but much faster and into much better stuff. They can only be build 3 tiles apart from each other though, and only on the coast, which means only 2-3 can be build per city usually. This means most Lanun cities will be coastal to take advantage of the great coves. Other than coves they are pretty lackluster, the only unique units they get are weaker versions of their counterparts but with stuff that helps them at sea, like Boarding Parties (champions) being able to take over ship they attack, and War Tortoises (knights) walking on water. This is another reason I think that Selrahc will go for the Mercurians. Lanun have a great economy but are very mediocre, if not pretty bad, at fighting on land.

That's where Basium comes in with agg/raiders (like yours truly!) and awesome unique units. It would be ideal if I could kill Selrahc off before he reaches Basium, if that is in fact what he's going for, but I doubt I'll be able to. We'll see I guess. Otherwise we'll have to be friends until I brutally backstab him! Anyways Hannah is Financial/Raiders which is pretty godly. Financial for awesome eco, raiders for awesome military mobility. Might be the best combination of traits.

World Spell damages all non-lanun units next to oceans. That won't be a big deal to me, considering i'm basically in the equivalent of Western Mongolia in this game. Any angry water tsunami that wants to hurt me has to come a long way inland.

Selrahc is a pretty good player. He's also a nice guy. I like him

[SIZE="4"]Irgy is Cardith Lorda of the Kuriotates[/SIZE]

I've never played the Kuriotates. Read this thread instead:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3949

Only one who isn't allowed is Selrahc and he can't access this thread right now anyways.

I don't know much about Irgy either. Is in PBEM3, but it hasn't gone on too long yet. Pretty decent I guess.

World Spell expands all Kuriotate city borders by a lot.

One thing to note is that this is a standard size map, which enables the Kuriotates to only build three full cities. The rest will be settlements.

[Sciz]

Speaking of Mercurians, Irgy might also go for them to circumvent the 3-city limit to his civ.

[Sciz]

So anyways, scouting east revealed even more desert and plains to the northeast, with a nice oasis tile and a sheep.

Warrior going south reveals more tundra and ice, and another furs.

Still awful land. So I settle on the plains hill and start a worker:



At least since I settled on a plains hill the worker will get out a bit faster. Research set to calendar, but I just realized I might switch from that. Only reason to get it is to revolt to agrarianism, but agrarianism is much worse with plains tiles because it's just a trade off between food and hammers, while agrarianism on grassland is a straight 1 food boost per tile. I dunno, i'll probably get calendar anyways. The food is more important early on, so I can grow my capital faster and stuff. I get my hammers from the plains hills around, and maybe some lumbercamps which will be 1/3/1 on forests next to rivers, which is pretty good.

So Calendar -> Crafting -> Mining, because I like getting mining early. Though I dunno I might not need it I guess.

I'm not really sure where to go with my teching yet though. Aristocracy is almost always the superior economic civic, but since I only have plains and don't have financial all my river farms will be 2f/3c which is not that good. Cottages are bad though, but at least they would keep their hammers. Ugh. All riverside cottages on plains will start as 1/1/2 which is bad but not horrible. 6 turns to hamlet which makes the tile 1/1/3, which is just as good as a farm pretty much. 13 more turns and they're 1/1/4. 25 more turns or something for 1/1/5, then with taxation another commerce. It could work. It also gives my regular farms 3f/1c without sanitation and 4f/1c with.

Education comes earlier than Code of Laws too, so it gives me time to get some cottages up before the farms turn into instant 3c tiles. Though cottages are much more vulnerable to pillaging, but hopefully I won't be much on the defensive with my Hippus. Everything tells me that aristocracy is still better, but I dunno. I might have to world build it out and see what happens. I will go for agrarianism though.

Maybe i'll skip early mining for mysticism though, and God King. That might be more worth it, my plains forests should be good enough for early production.