[SPOILERS] The Peaceful Centaur: a Study in Possibility

[Irgy]

Firstly, apologies in advance to all these people when they finally read this I really need to attach a self-destruct code on this post for the end of the game...

Selrahc is Hannah of the Lanun

Selrahc is, of course, a pretty strong player, although I think he's not the strongest at economy. Hannah (Raider/Financial) is a strong leader in herself, and the Lanun can be quite handy. Except on this map, from what we know so far. If he's lucky, Maksim included some lakes/oceans, and Selrahc will be able to use them for food/commerce to compensate for the plains, and he'll still be a contender. If he's not lucky, well...he gets a weaker Champion and some naval unique units. At least Financial/Raiders is still a killer leader.

The Lanun world spell, Raging Seas, won't do much of anything on this map unless we're underestimating the amount of water.

Selrahc may be extra careful around us, even though we're not Pocketbeetle.

Spoiler note: I'm assuming FFHPBEM1 is basically over now and not worrying a great deal about what's spoiled about that one here (which I'm pretty sure is not much anyway). If PocketBeetle is reading this though maybe he should skip this bit anyway just to be safe.

Selrahc seems to me like he knows the game well, he knows what he's doing, he's experienced, he's intelligent, but he's lacking something. Maybe it's economy like you say, I'm not sure. His POW rush in PBEM1 was an excellent idea, and he seemed to pull it off well, but then things never really flourished from there like they ought to have. Maybe it's just that the Kuriotates and Pocketbeetle in particular were just too fast, but it felt like he should have ended up in a better position out of that than he did. In FFHPBEM4 he got wiped out by a wraith, which could really have happened to anyone (in fact as I said already it happened to me in one of my self-play games).

The Lanun as a civ at least is looking like a potentially disasterous choice on this map. I expect he hasn't settled because he's looking for water. If his start is anything like ours, it's a real kick in the pants, and the 2 movement settler is rubbing salt in the wound. Interesting to see next turn whether he's just moving for a plains-hill start like us, or holding off to search for water. Whether he finds some or not, at the very least we appear to be safe from their naval superiority.

At the end of the day though, even without any UUs and UBs, he still has the leader with the two best traits in the game, so he'll make a good show of it. Here's what I'm worried about from him:

* Raiders is always a threat. Less so for Kuriotates than other civs mind you, but true for anyone.
* He's going to be reluctant to ally with us after PBEM1, as Mardoc has already said.
* He's competition for the Mercurian Gate. Why do I say that? Because of this post in his PBEM1 spoiler. Not to mention he was planning Basium in PBEM4 as well.


Someone to be taken seriously, and a reason on his own for us to hurry up a little in reaching the Gate.

Sciz is Tasunke of the Hippus
Sciz is, I think, on the medium to weak end of the scale as a player.

He seems to be a builder type person, with a very non builder leader - Tasunke is Aggressive/Raiders. Assuming he plays to the leader, we'll be seeing some nasty, extremely fast horses coming around sooner rather than later. If he chooses a different target or we can outtech him, Centaurs can keep up with horses (assuming Sprint), and Angels aren't too shabby either.

Unless he's absolutely ruthless with pillaging everyone into the dust, he ought to fall behind in the later game

Sciz has never particularly impressed me either, at least with what I've seen. I'm mostly going by his PBEM4 spoiler thread here though. I'm ded-lurking someone else in PBEM2 so I don't know exactly what's going on there, although it doesn't sound like things are going that well. He strikes me as someone less than optimal in his micromanagement, and who we should hopefully be able to outmaneuver in war. But I could certainly be proved wrong.

Tasunke has no economic traits, but basically only needs to manage to research four technologies: Horseback Riding, Trade, Stirrups and Warhorses. Everything else is just pre-requisites, and economy techs which might speed the way. His best bet is to use conquest to make up for the shortages in the economy. While horses are certainly to be feared, even his agressive-promoted melee units can take the mobility promotion and use the world spell to get to 3 movement and blitz.

Let's just hope we don't start too near him and he bothers someone else But not too successfully, as a conquest-fueled runaway is the biggest threat we face, and these guys are the ones to do it. Hopefully the lack of economic traits combined with what I hope to be a lack of economic talent will keep him in the dark ages

Ichabod is Kandros Fir of the Khazad
Financial/Aggressive/Ingenuity makes a strong leader. The Dwarves should do well on a hilly map. Ichabod's a strong player - if I remember right from reading the threads after PBEM4 ended, there was one spot where a lurker tried to point out something he'd missed, and he turned out not only to have taken that into account but also included a piece of info that the lurkers didn't know.

The Dwarves are by nature slow units, although all these hills may make him surprisingly quick.

I expect to have to fear Ichabod, and always take him into account.

Initially I assumed Ichabod didn't know what he was doing, picking an expansive leader in a no settlers game. When I read his spoiler thread I immediately knew better. He's someone who knows exactly what he's doing, and is meticulous about doing it. I was involved in that lurker discussion, something to do with hidden nationality, the Barbarian trait and animals. He certainly made us look stupid, from what I remember.

The Khazad are a civ I've never really been a fan of myself. The need to stockpile ridiculous amounts of gold, and the snails-pace tech and development rate that come with it, really seem to hurt. However, if anyone is going to have figured out how to get the ball rolling with them it's Ichabod.

I'm expecting them to be a possibly slow moving but fundamentally unstoppable force. Not worth warring with them early on, basically someone we only want to fight when we have some sort of magic available to wear their units down first. Dwarves on hills are just not worth fighting with otherwise.

They're almost certain to go for Runes of Kilmorph. This might normally mean we should avoid it. However, I'd consider whether they might well use it even if they don't get the shrine. This leads to the following potential plan. First:
* Ancient Chants -> Mysticism
At this point we build both an Elder Council and a Pagan Temple, and run both a priest and a scientist.

* Education
In my opinion, it's not worth delaying this tech for anything.

Then, if a scientist shows up, well we've got it out twice as quick which is great news for our tech rate. In that case we build our academy and just forget the whole business, and we're still ahead. On the other hand, if a great prophet pops up though, we research:
* Crafting -> Mining
and if Runes of Kilmorph is still unfounded we can bulb Way of the Earthmother.

Although he needs a lot less techs than we do, especially with the unnecessary detour through education, I think we can basically guarantee beating him to the religion with this approach. If he plans to bulb it, well we can get to Mysticism as quickly as he can, and we then generate gpp at 4x the rate he can (because of philosophical, and because we're piggybacking off the scientist)

That way we get ourselves a shrine for a religion which another civ is still going to want to spread for us. The risk though is that he decides to just forget about dwarf synergy and use a different religion instead. Not sold on it completely, but it's worth putting on the list of things to consider.

Dantski is Ethne of the Elohim
Don't know a lot about Dantski, he doesn't update his lurker threads that much. I also don't know a lot about how best to play the Elohim.

He does have the handy Sanctuary spell to allow a total offense or bail him out of a rush.

Ethne is Defender/Creative/Tolerant, a fairly weak combo.

If Maksim didn't pre-place the Unique Features, his ability to see them is worthless, and he doesn't really have an econ focused leader or any especially noteworthy unique units. We should be able to outtech him and outwar him.

The thing that makes me giggle about Dantski is that, after getting criticised for picking civ-first in Pitboss2 for BTS, he picked leader-first in FFH PBEM4. The trouble is, leaders are much more important than civs in BTS, but civs are much more important than leaders in FFH, so he compensated for one mistake by making the same mistake again in reverse And now he's picked Ethne of all people? The Elohim are a decent civ, but why would you want Creative over Philosophical? Rubbish traits basically except for Tolerant (which really should be a civ-trait anyway).

He strikes me as having no real direction. I might be biased from having only read Sulla's point of view on pitboss2, but it seemed like he just went along with everyone else on a half-baked invasion of India, was the first to crack when things weren't going well, and then was happy just to sit out the rest of the game with no real plan to win. FFHPBEM4's thread showed a fair lack of understanding of the game mechanics and a fair lack of direction as well. Was cotent to vassal to Ichabod in that game, though planned to backstab him, which is something worth being aware of His role-play rationalisation won't work so well for Ethne as it did for Faeryl though...

The Elohim can be quite a threat in the right hands. Monks are a fairly easily accessible and useful UU. Their worldspell makes them just not worth the bother of rushing or even fighting at all if you can help it, but at the same time making them a dangerous endgame threat if left alone. And tolerant is a trait which can be a real snowball builder.

So quite a dangerous civ in the right hands, but hopefully these aren't the right hands.

These guys are our most likely competition for the Empyrean and Order religions, so knowing what they're up to in that regard could be important.

Jkaen is Dain of the Amurites

Don't know much about Jkaen. The Amurites are of course completely focused on magic. They have all sorts of handy tricks due to their hero and their metamagic mana; if we give them long enough to set up, any unit they have can theoretically have every tier I spell for free. Any unit with Channelling II or III can then be as effective as a Mage - Priests, Firebows, High Priests. In addition, he gets that Cave of Ancestors bonus XP, so he can probably mass produce Mages.

Dain wants lots of different mana sources, so as Irgy already mentioned, without Unique Features he's somewhat nerfed.

Dain is Philosophical/Arcane; not especially focused on economy, although Philosophical's not bad.

Jkaen is new to these forums, and I don't think much is there to be known about him. He's in another recently started pbem for BTS, PBEM15, so I had a peek at his spoiler there. Seems competant, but hasn't done anything of note thus far. Mostly just having technical issues writing the thread. It's not terribly detailed, which suggests he's not one of these hard core micro planners.

Dain is a huge threat in the late game (or so I'd assume anyway). Their worldspell means don't rely on magic - although that won't bother anyone else particularly (certainly not Ichabod). They have many, many means by which they can produce unlimited level 2 casters at will, and once they have those set up they're a huge threat. However they take a great deal of setting up.

So basically, someone needs to horse/centaur/boar/monk rush them off the map before they get going and we'll be fine. Otherwise, look out.

So, all in all, we have 2 Raider opponents, 2 Financial opponents, and 2 Aggressive opponents, with the Elohim and Amurites also providing an arcane punch.

We should be careful not to overbuild roads, and try to strike a good balance of econ and military might; if we let either falter, we're in trouble.

One other general thing to add; No elves, so Way of the Forests is up for grabs. Not sure why we'd want it particularly, but there you go. If anything it means we need to consider the fact that there's 6 civs and only 6 religions people are likely to actually want, maybe 5 if there's so little water on the map that OO becomes ignored as well. And we want 2 of them

Which reminds me; all of Basium's living units become angels. This means in particular that there's really no reason Basium needs to run a "good" religion. It's a shame he can't run Ashen Veil really . Worthing keeping in mind the other options though.

[Irgy]

Yeah, thanks... where were you on turn zero?

Explored further, found something that's not plains...

Desert! And not the strawberries and ice cream kind.

Also of visible note is the fact that Selrahc still hasn't settled. Still looking for water at 2 moves per turn I guess.

Demographics:

[Maksim]

What I really want to know is what's in "Document1"!:neenernee

Best wishes to the players. Honestly.

By the way, a general point for Maksim: Please ignore any whining I might do about the map or settings or anything related. If I have a problem with the map I'll wait until the end of the game to comment on it, when I have a full understanding. Until then any comment I make is just an observation.

That's quite alright - you have been very civil about it so far, and I have quite a thick skin anyway. Speak your mind freely - if I disagree with any of the points or want to explain my reasoning, I'll do so in the lurker thread, and we'll compare notes after the game.

So far your thread has been enlightening indeed, and I hope it continues to be this way - my only regret is that, as the map-maker, I have to limit myself even more than the average lurker in commenting\asking questions. Oh well, maybe once the game moves into later stages (I'm not giving anything away by hoping it does move to a later stage, right?).

[Mardoc]

In an attempt to maybe get 2 turns in today, I went ahead and played the save.

More dry lands. Selrahc's apparently still wandering in the desert.



And since I don't have anything interesting to talk about, the last of our pre-game discussions. We'll have to reopen these at some point

Oh, the merit to the clan is pretty much entirely that they're good at spamming units, and with Mercurians in play, a horde strategy can pay off because it results in lots of angels. I'm thinking of it not so much for any particular strength of the clan or synergy, more as a feeder civ for the Angels. But I agree the other choices are stronger.

Ok, I understand you now anyway.

... and you're right that having no debate on which civ gets new acquisitions will make life a lot easier for us.

I don't remember saying that. In all honesty, I actually think it's a kind of weakness. One of the tricks with two civ teams that I was hoping to abuse is being able to trade cities around. For instance, building double speed granaries with the expansive leader then trading back to the aggressive leader for double speed training yards, and so on. And matching city specialisation with traits - financial commerce cities and aggressive raider production cities. We can't really do that sort of thing very effectively with Kuriotates. Of course the counter argument is that we don't need to do that quite so much with Kuriotates in the first place.

For the religion split, essentially what I was thinking is that Kurios are inherently limited to 3-4 units/turn, depending on map size, but they're capable of putting a lot of hammers into those units.

True, although I think in practice that's less limiting than you might expect.

That means that Kurio army composition will tend to be weighted toward an elite force that isn't going to die much, which fits Empyrean much better than it fits Order.

Why do you say that? Ratha are expensive, but like I say they clash with the Kuriotate UU already. Otherwise, the priests are the same price, while the foot soldiers of Order (Crusaders) are more expensive than the Empyrean Radiant Guard.

Meanwhile, Mercurians might almost want to build some warriors for the express purpose of suiciding them to make angels. And the ability to give them an extra +1 Str from Bless means they're more likely to do something useful in the process.

Fair point.

Honestly, unless we spread out our core cities a ton, I don't expect maintenance to affect the Kurios much at all, and using a national unit, tier 3 caster just for maintenance seems like a waste. Meanwhile, Basium will be spread out all over the place, especially since he's likely to be on more than one side of the Kurio empire, so Basilicas are a very handy idea for him.

I'd suggested unyielding order for the happiness not the maintenance so much. An infinite happy cap in a supercity is a powerful thing to have. But you make a good point about Basillicas and possibly even Social Order being more use to Mercurians.

This is thinking more long term, however, after the Mercurians have established a big enough empire to outproduce the Kurios, at least in units/turn if not also hammers/turn. That might be the same point at which we've essentially won, anyway. I find I'm much better at thinking long term, equilibrium, than I am at paying attention to the close stuff.

Of course. It's getting there that's the hard part. Just surviving to build the gate itself will be a huge acheivement really.

Finally, one last concern that you may have already figured out - when we finish the Gate, are we able to promote a new settlement to city? And are we able to choose which settlement is promoted, or does the game do that automatically? Especially on a small map, that could hurt if uncontrollable.

Any unit in a settlement can use the ability "promote settlement" to change a settlement to a city, as long as the limit hasn't been reached already. The only requirement is not having the maximum number of cities already. This applies when a Kuriotate city is captured or razed as well. This would also in principle allow us to muck about building fast granaries, tailors and jewlers in each of Basium's cities before trading them back, as long as we trade our third city to Basium's control first. It's even worth considering the option of having 2 genuine Kuriotate cities, and the third under constant rotation through the other cities - building Kuriotate enhanced buildings then giving the city back to the Mercurians. It might not actually be any better than just having 3 genuine Kuriotate cities though anyway.

Also note that Basium does not actually need to claim the Mercurian Gate city. The way it works mechanically is that the Basium unit himself has an ability which allows him to claim the Mercurian Gate city. The AI always uses it straight away, and in single player you would always want to use it to take the city from the AI, but there's technically no reason we need to. With properly co-operating humans in control that ability is somewhat meaningless. Where we build the gate doesn't matter quite so much. The only thing is though the AI Basium might use it before we get a chance to stop him. Especially if we're last in the turn order.

There is a fair bit of merit to the idea of having at least a capital set up for Basium as soon as he arrives though anyway, because he can be off to a pretty horribly slow start otherwise. So maybe it really will be easier to just build the gate there and do it the normal way. In which case, yes, we can choose which one it will be. We're already set up for the third Kuriotate city to float around for a while if we really want it to then as well.

By the way, all of this sort of thing I hope to test out in a test game or two at some point. I've actually never even played the Mercurian civ to be honest, so it's worth doing.

I think a prebuilt capital for Basium isn't actually that much of a priority, assuming we plan to give him a bunch of settlements in addition; if we make sure to have the land improved before handing off the settlements, then they'll grow quite quickly, and starting with a whole empire instead of one city means that we'll need time to build up cities anyway.

You could well be right. It's probably something to test and/or take it as it comes.

That said, putting a tailor and jeweler in each Basium city is worth a lot of happiness.

Happiness? They're resources, they don't accumulate, so we only need one of each between both teams for the happiness benefit. Unless I'm missing something? I was suggesting this only for the up-to-30%-each resource-fueled commerce bonuses that the buildings provide.

Honestly, I think it'll come down to what the situation is in game at the time we're ready, and if we find 3 great sites or have to settle for one less good. Heck, it might be worth giving a city to Basium just for the chance to start the Kurios over with a better site.

I agree entirely.

I saw that flavor starts will be off, so I'm good with leaving the Malakim behind.

Ack - I've already sent in our picks, with Malakim still third. I noticed the lack of flavor starts (indeed the Malakim were what made me ask about it in the first place), and was going to ask you about it. But I honestly couldn't think who would make a better third candidate, flavour-starts or not. Varn's still Spiritual-Adaptive, one of the best trait pairs available for this. The worldspell is still good. That they don't get an overpowered starting location is a shame but they still seem clearly better than anything other than our first two choices.

It's not too late to change though if you've got a better third-pick suggestion. Hopefully third pick won't matter anyway.

Turns out I was wrong about suiciding Warriors, anyway - they're one of the units that are unbuildable by Basium. The cheapest available will probably turn out to be horsemen or axes.

Ok, good to know. That's probably the way it is for a reason. Horsemen and axes are still fairly cheap and expendable.

Finally, something that'll probably have to wait for a test game to be certain of - I wonder if Enclaves remain in a gifted city, of if they degrade to Towns? I know Pirate Ports remain, but only the 'create cove' spell is listed as Lanun only. It's another potential fun trick, though, if we're willing to leave a city in Kurio hands for 60 turns to upgrade them.

That sounds like quite a clever trick, although a difficult one to pull off I imagine.

According to the manual and civiliopedia, each building grants both +1 Happy and +10% commerce for each feeder resource, plus the Fine Clothes/Jewels resources. If we get all 6 resources and both buildings, that sounds like +6 happy/city, plus the manufactured resources to use or trade.

Ahh you're right indeed. I misunderstood you before, but you make a good point.

I was apparently unclear - I meant mostly that I'm fine with keeping them as #3 rather than arguing to push them upward.

Ok, great. You weren't all that unclear - I considered that you might have just meant that, but if you didn't it was more urgent to sort it out.

Other civs that I think could work pretty well are Hippus with Rhoanna or Lanun with Hannah, but neither probably synergizes as well as Malakim will.

Lanun are probably ok, but you're already playing them so it would have been a bit dull. They've been suggested before as a good launchpad civ for switching to Basium and leaving the old civ as an AI. They just don't get as much synergy out of the human-human thing as the other options.

The biggest down side of Rohanna is not that she'd be a bad candidate for Basium but that she simply doesn't need to bother with it. She's awesome enough already, and mucking about getting Fanaticism just slows down Warhorses and the ensuing piles of win that come with it. Mind you, the same might be said about Kuriotates as well, but I think they get a bit more out of it for their trouble.

In particular, it appears that killed units keep their XP when they become Angels, so Spiritual Priests will be our ticket to the various high-tier Angels.

And especially Malakim worldspell priests.

I almost want to suggest Ljosalfar/Arendel, except that Fellowship doesn't grant angels upon death. Still, being able to grow up Elven cities everywhere would be another city trading for power mechanic.

It would be, but at the same time it's not a huge improvement over just keeping the cities elven in the first place.

[pocketbeetle]

Dropping in to cheer on my fellow Kurios and say good luck.

I've already bemoaned your capital location in the lurker thread, as well as insulting Maksim repeatedly for not balancing the map around you and clustering the resources.
Looks like a difficult map for sure.

[Mardoc]

Dropping in to cheer on my fellow Kurios and say good luck.

I've already bemoaned your capital location in the lurker thread, as well as insulting Maksim repeatedly for not balancing the map around you and clustering the resources.
Looks like a difficult map for sure.

Why, thank you! Hope to see you back again; maybe we'll have to make a batch of cookies.

Still, at least we didn't get a coastal capital .

It would have been interesting for all the resources to be in nice 6x6 squares . I still don't think we're in as bad shape as Selrahc is with his Lanun, though, at least.

[Irgy]

Dropping in to cheer on my fellow Kurios and say good luck.

I've already bemoaned your capital location in the lurker thread, as well as insulting Maksim repeatedly for not balancing the map around you and clustering the resources.
Looks like a difficult map for sure.

Thanks for the support! Good to know you'll be watching. Difficult map indeed, but hopefully difficult for everyone. We do have one advantage on these endless dry plains, which is that we're a civ motivated to work cottages (because of Enclaves). Agrarianism is given a real kick in the pants with no 2-food-0-hammer tiles, which really hurts the farm strategy and makes cottages viable again, so it's good to have a civ that wants to work them.

By the way, I checked, and cottage growth is indeed sped up on quick. So it's:
6 to hamlet
13 to village
20 to town
40 to enclave

89 turns total. So, as long as we don't get pillaged we'll be getting quite a number of them in the capital at least by the t120-130 mark. There's plenty will have happened by then, but not so bad on the whole.

That's quite alright - you have been very civil about it so far, and I have quite a thick skin anyway. Speak your mind freely - if I disagree with any of the points or want to explain my reasoning, I'll do so in the lurker thread, and we'll compare notes after the game.

An excellent attitude to have.

Also one that allows me to espouse my map balance theory below without guilt. A lot of this stuff I've said already in other comments, but it amuses me to put it all together. My current theory on the core strategy used for balancing the map is this:
"Kick everyone in the pants, but kick them all equally hard."

Khazad: Kicked in the pants by no-huts as they could really use the early-game gold more than anyone. The lack of food hurts them particularly, as they want to work as many mines as possible, and that's made harder in two ways. One, the lack of grassland means they struggle to work enough food to support the mines. Two, the lack of grass-hills means they work half as many mines for the same food. So, working three tiles they would normally be able to do farm-mine-mine to break even on food, now they need to do farm-farm-mine.

Kuriotates: Kicked in the pants by the monotonicity of the terrain. With three rings, we should normally have our pick of types of land to work - whereas others might run out of grass tiles in the BFC we've got twice as many to choose from. Also by the lack of food in general, since we're supposed to grow to high popluation. The fact that the best capital location (that I can find at least) has nothing at all in the outer ring. And finally low sea levels, providing more land to everyone else but the same number of cities for us.

Amurites: Kicked in the pants by the (ok, as yet unconfirmed) complete absence of unique features. Less variety of mana available means weaker Cave of Ancestors. Also weaker spellcasters in general, thanks to having less spells to choose from - although later on the combination of Govannon and some switching about of mana nodes with Dispel Magic will fix that. The lack of Letum Frigis will be a double-whammy, with no free golden age and no snowfall for the late game. Poor land also means a globally slower tech rate, giving us more time to smack them out of the game before they get out of control.

Elohim: Kicked in the pants also by the lack of unique features, as their ability to see them all from the start is worthless. And kicked themselves in the pants by using Ethne and her worthless traits. Ok, that's about all I've got for that one.

Lanun: Actually the bad land is, on its own, really good for them, as they want to work sea tiles and sea tiles are just as good as ever. Except for one slight problem: There aren't any! Low sea levels, inland start, 2 movement slightly-reduced-vision settlers, *thwack*! That it's turn 3, and they still haven't settled sums it up. Still, once they find some water things will get a lot better for them. I have to assume they've sighted some or surely they'd have just given up and settled by now.

Hippus: Mmm, actually I can't really think what the kick is for them actually. Maybe a massive excess of horses and copper, to make their capital-provided-horses a waste (actually that part hurts us as well) and to make sure everyone has bronze warriors a-plenty to survive a horseman rush. Maybe they're isolated on an island? I guess we'll find out later.


Finally, speaking of the map, there's some clues for us in the lore post:

Rivers were made to run in circles, hills raised to suit the whim of the ancient emperors.

So, expect to see rivers running in circles and hills in arbitrary places by the map editor. Not that informative, but it does definately suggest that the map is quite heavily hand-editted. In the tech thread, Maksim effectively stated that some sort of map script would be used as a starting point, but how far diverged we are from that point is hard to know. There is certainly something truely unnatural about the plans/tundra/desert that we've seen so far so I expect there's been a fair bit of it. And the desert forest to the east doesn't happen on any map script I've seen. But it does still have something of a natural feel in the details for the most part, so if it's not based on a natural base map he's done a meticulous job of fiddling around with it.

... storms flashed across the world, destroying everything in their path, ravaging the land, leaving it barren and lifeless

Barren and lifeless indeed. We've seen that one already.

There's also mention of "Patria" and "ancient magics", suggesting that maybe there are some remnants of these and therefore unique features after all, but they've been hand placed. I currently actually think that's more likely. Hiding with all the grassland in some heavenly realm.

[Mardoc]

I opened up the second save of the day , although I'm not planning to play it, and one thing jumped out at me - we've met Ichabod! I don't see any dwarves, so I'm guessing the little short guys were on a hill and then back off of it.

It's probably a good idea to send him a greeting message. It's also a sign that the world may be even smaller than we're thinking? Or, um, this is the good part? Maybe being limited to three cities won't sting as bad as we thought?

That's one thing Selrahc'll have going for him, Water mana; fortunately we do too! And Sun mana if we get some ice we want to turn into tundra. And certainly some way to cast Vitalize will be in great demand, either Nature mana or Druids. Since we're Good and planning to stay Good, perhaps we should plan on Nature mana at some point.

Still, I agree with you in this much - the world ought to be full of surprises. There might, in fact, be a land of milk and honey somewhere. For that matter, we probably shouldn't be assuming that there's nothing good to the north, that tundra may break away and turn into something useful. I'm actually tempted to suggest an excess of scouting units over normal, both for game purposes but also for satisfying my curiosity!

That is an encouraging sign on the cottages, that's probably not too different from the amount of time it would take to set up an Elven economy, but of course we get the advantages earlier and have no particular tech requirements beyond Education.

And, um, Selrahc still hasn't founded. I hope he's being civil to Maksim about this

[Irgy]

I opened up the second save of the day , although I'm not planning to play it, and one thing jumped out at me

Good work on the earlier save for getting two turns in. I expect with the similarity in time zones this might happen more than once.

we've met Ichabod! I don't see any dwarves, so I'm guessing the little short guys were on a hill and then back off of it.

Hurrah! I always enjoy making contact.

It's probably a good idea to send him a greeting message.

Indeed. I'll write something up over lunch. Before I do though, um, how do we actually want to deal with him anyway? To summarise the relevant parts of the player discussion previously:
* He is, in my opinion, the best player we're up against.
* He seems trustworthy.
* He's absolutely impossible to rush. Dwarves on hills, yuck.
* We have an opportunity to potentially screw him slightly by taking his religion.

To me he sounds like a good candidate for a long term ally to cultivate. But maybe I say that about everyone I meet, I always want everyone to be my friend.

The biggest risk is of course that, being a good player, he'll be hard to take down in the end game. However, I think that the core strength of our entire Kuriotate/Mercurian strategy is late game cheesiness. Having a rock solid and reliable ally to get us there would be excellent.

If I can find a way to put the feelers out for how he would react to us founding the dwarf religion I will, though precisely how to do it isn't clear to me yet.

One final thing to mention: He may well have sent us an email already, I won't know until I get home and can check. I won't send anything until I do, to avoid crossposting.

It's also a sign that the world may be even smaller than we're thinking? Or, um, this is the good part? Maybe being limited to three cities won't sting as bad as we thought?

I don't think it really tells us that much to be honest. Mostly probably just that we moved our scout SE and he moved his NW.

That's one thing Selrahc'll have going for him, Water mana; fortunately we do too! And Sun mana if we get some ice we want to turn into tundra. And certainly some way to cast Vitalize will be in great demand, either Nature mana or Druids. Since we're Good and planning to stay Good, perhaps we should plan on Nature mana at some point.

This biggest limitation on Vitalize will be Channeling 3. Not sure at all what the best approach for gaining that would be.

We can become neutral while running Empyrean if we want, by switching to an evil religion first to get off good, at which point Empyrean at least won't switch us back. I haven't confirmed this personally, but I've heard it suggested before anyway. Still, druids are well off our tech path.

And, um, Selrahc still hasn't founded. I hope he's being civil to Maksim about this

I hope he's not following one of these "rivers that run in circles" hoping to find the outlet

[Mardoc]

Before I do though, um, how do we actually want to deal with him anyway? To summarise the relevant parts of the player discussion previously:
* He is, in my opinion, the best player we're up against.
* He seems trustworthy.
* He's absolutely impossible to rush. Dwarves on hills, yuck.
* We have an opportunity to potentially screw him slightly by taking his religion.

My initial thoughts on ideal ways to deal with people:

Ichabod/Khazad - yes, we want him as an ally. The vaults will tend to push him against expansion, the hills are nasty, and he's a good honorable player. It might be a tad early to be discussing Kilmorph; I agree we could make good use of a holy city of a religion that others will want to spread. On the other hand, maybe it's worth giving up a bit for peaceable relations?

I don't have a good enough read on his personality to know what we can get away with and still remain friends. Maybe if we spin it as getting Kilmorph started early?

Selrahc/Lanun - cautious coexistence. I think Selrahc will be hard to ally with both from Pocketbeetle's example of what the Kurios are capable of, and a general personality that doesn't mind attacking. Plus, he may be feeling desperate. That said, I think he'd keep any deals he makes.

Sciz/Hippus - target. Maybe not yet, but target. No need to let him know, though. But if we don't get him, he'll get us.

Dantski/Elohim - secondary target, I think. Once he burns his worldspell, he'll be vulnerable to whoever decides to take him out. That might as well be us.

Jkaen/Amurites - ally if possible. Not as firm an ally as Ichabod, but we can't afford too many targets anyway.

Of course, they may have other plans for us

And of course, there's no point in targeting anyone until we make it to at least our third city, if not also to Angels. We can grow too much at the moment to bother spending the time preventing others from growing. But basically I'm thinking ally/coexist with the better players, target the weaker ones, and reevaluate mid-game.

Anyhow, it's bedtime here. Talk to you later.

PS - yes, especially at the beginning, if it's possible to turn around two turns in a day, I will definitely grab it. I don't intend to take more than every other turn, both to make sure we're both informed and because after Europe goes to bed there's no rush anyway.