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

[Irgy]

From your diplo with Mr Yellow, and from the demographics, it seems as though he is -already- at war.
(look at the sharp drop in army count).
I wouldn't be surprised if he had lost a stack there.

I'd wondered as much myself. Turns out you're right:

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]I was peeking in-game at how many cities you had, and couldn't help but notice you've researched Cartography. Congratulations! Best of luck with the three stooges If I'm right in guessing the Malakim have built Form of the Titan, well, you're probably going to need them.

I don't suppose I could talk you into a map trade? I don't have much to offer other than my own lands, but surely you must be curious to see them? I'm also happy to sign open borders if you'd like, even though I won't get anything particularly out of it. I have trade routes connected with the Elohim, so if you manage to connect to them you'll be connected to me as well. I have a spare gold for trade, not sure whether you'd need it or not though.

It's good for us to co-operate as best we can, when we're at the bottom of the scoreboard together (I whipped myself there to some extent, but I am definately behind in many things). We're far enough apart that we don't have much to fight over anyway.[/COLOR]


[COLOR="Cyan"]I sadly have my hands full with a war against current runaway power Thoth right now and it's going badly.
Dunno how long i'll live, but i have no interrest in trade as long as this is going on.[/COLOR]

Yay~ finally a good mess outside that hopefully the Elohim will get drawn into.

I think you're far too positive about foreign wars. Sure, they can mean other players get tie up killing each other's units. But if someone wins decisively - something which can easily happen in this game, it's a big, big problem for us.

[Irgy]

Well, I sent a pyre zombie out exploring to the northeast, and discovered something quite interesting:


Which raises the question, are the elves to the north or south of here? I'd be a little surprised if they were to the south, since they've managed to meet the Elohim and Bannor without meeting us. Could be true if it was the one scout on a long adventure and it followed the northern coast, missing us, but still I'd be surprised if we hadn't met yet. More likely is that they're to the north. Which means I've basically discovered a whole bunch of land to the southeast of this point which is going to be mine. Exactly how much remains to be seen, but it's most likely more than I was expecting to have anyway. Good news on the whole.

I'm kind of committed to settling the freshly built settler in the just-southeast-of-the-capital location, but the next one is going to stake a claim on this pigs+rice location, which will hopefully complete the marking off of my territory.

Speaking of the soon to be settled city, I forgot to say but my pyre zombie has wandered around and confirmed there's no seafood hiding in the fog, so the location I've had marked with a "c?" for a while now looks like it's the choice. Overlaps a lot with the capital, but claims as much unclaimed land as possible, and gets bananas and clams in the inner ring. I've already improved both of those tiles as well, so this city's going to get up and running quite quickly.

[Irgy]

More contact! Nyktorion has found me with hawks.

[COLOR="SeaGreen"]Dear Irgy,

we have just established contact in RB FFH PBEM III. My hawk has spotted your northern territory this turn. We Ljosalfar are living to the north of the Elohim, with whom you have already established contact.

I am quite confident that we will be able to get along well. I don't really like expensive and unproductive wars, and our distance and separation by the Elohim make territorial conflicts between us unlikely; so I don't see any reason against peaceful coexistence.

As a gesture of friendship, there's two pieces of information I can offer you at this point. First, apart from you, I already know the Elohim and the Bannor (as I see, you already have contact with both of them, as well); moreover I know Thoth of the Malakim, who is located west of the Bannor lands. Second, in case you are worrying about me having adopted slavery already: I can assure you that I don't have any interest in having the Ashen Veil holy city, so I won't be competing with you for the Corruption of Spirit tech.

best regards,
Nyktorion of the Ljosalfar[/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]Greetings, pleased to hear we have finally made contact.

Thanks for the friendly greeting, and the information. We will continue our current beeline towards Corruption of Spirit regardless, but it's good to know we can expect to actually get it.

We have gone for quite a while without meeting anyone other than the Elohim, but have recently met the Bannor, and now yourselves. We have heard that the Lanun are to the west and maybe south of us, across the water.

We have plenty of land available for us to settle peacefully, so indeed we also see no need for conflict. Our biggest concerns are the Malakim, who as you probably know are in the process of defeating the Bannor in an aggressive war, and look at risk of becoming something of a runaway. The Elohim are also in a nice position, and are the best hope of keeping the Malakim at bay. We have a good relationship with them, but WarriorKnight has been reluctant to make any comments about what he plans to do with the Malakim, other than broadly agreeing that they're in danger of being a runaway. If a war between them did occur however I fear somewhat the consequences if either side is decisively victorious.

We have trade routes established with the Elohim, so if you were to establish trade routes with them yourselves we would be connected. We understand you are an Arcane minded people like we are, so the potential for sharing mana is there for the future.

Irgy Arbandi[/COLOR]

So I was right in guessing they're to the north then. Not actually sure how much land there is to the east, but hopfully it opens out a bit. The city site I found looks quite good, I've discovered fish there as well.


This also means new graphs:

[Irgy]

Another reply from Nyktorion:

[COLOR="SeaGreen"]Dear Irgy,

thanks for the warm words you returned!

Indeed, I am watching the fast growth of the Malakim sceptically. Still, I think there is a lot of hope that we are not dealing with a runaway already. One of my hawks has an eye over the siege of Torrolerial, and with Mr. Yellow in full military mode, and already nine warriors present in Torrolerial, I think that it will still take Thoth some more time and blood to conlude the siege. I also don't think any conflict between WarriorKnight and Thoth will lead to a decisive victory on either side; WarriorKnight has sanctuary, but not enough military to force a decisive victory on his own - so I think the game still offers good chances to win for all of us (except for Mr. Yellow, I'd say).

As soon as we have a connection, I'm of course always open for trades. A bit later, mana trades seem like a good thing; for instance, I would be quite interested in getting my hands on your fire mana for some time once I have adepts. In return, you might be interested in getting the death mana from my Broken Sepulcher for some time, once I have connected with (with the Necromany tech).

best regards,
Nyktorion[/COLOR]

And a short reply (well, short for me given how much I tend to blab on).

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]Thanks for the info about the war, it's good to know. Not sure if I read you right anyway, but just letting you know I'm fairly sure you don't need the Necromancy tech to get the death mana out of the Sepulchre. You should just need cultural control and a road.

Let me know when you're close to connecting trade routes with the Elohim, as I expect we'll have plenty to discuss. Don't forget how useful rivers are for that too - I say so particularly because I forgot myself, we were connected well before I actually even realised we were, and could have been connected a good while before that. All this time to over-think what we're doing doesn't seem to prevent missing things and making mistakes : )[/COLOR]

[Irgy]

We have finally learned about the Ether (actually it was a couple of turns ago now I admit... sorry):


As Tebryn, I've been well aware of its existence for a long time, but it's good to see that the citizens have learned to connect with it once more.

In honor of this occasion, I bring you a post which I've been working on for a while now. It's the setup for magic users that I'm aiming for in the long term. At any given point in time I probably won't have anything quite like what I've written here, but it's good to have an ideal and an objective. This is what I'll aim towards and keep in mind when choosing my mana nodes and promotions.

By default I'm talking about the units I will put in a stack on the field for foreign expeditions, except where I explicitly mention them "staying home".

Channeling III


First, the four Eaters of Deams. Where I list promotions, I mean to roughly prioritise them from first listed to last, although technology and level requirements will impact the order I actually take them in.

* Puegom, the undead specialist. Will get to Death 3, Spell Extension 2, Mobility and Combat 5. This is the unit I will put onto a newly captured city to eat all of its citizens and turn them into wraiths with combat 1, stigmata, empowerment 5 and movement 4 (not to mention strong once I have the Tower of Necromancy). He is also the unit who will create as high a proportion of the skeletons in my empire as possible. It's not always worth paying the upkeep to keep them around all the time, but whatever skeletons I do keep around on a permanent basis I'll try and make sure are his.

* Munin, Puegom's apprentice. Will take basically the same promotions as Puegom. A backup, another source of top-quality skeletons, and lets me split the stack to take two cities if needs be.

* Warwick, the stack-killer. Ice 3, Enchantment 3, Mobility, Metamagic 3. Metamagic is purely for the extra damage and resistance reduction, rather than any of the actual spells. This guy will snowfall anyone who lets him, and at a pinch will have a Slow spell with a resistance chance close to 0%. He doesn't need to be an Eater of Dreams particularly, but

* Grillik, the firey. Somewhat like Puegom and Munin, but will take Fire 3. This allows me to summon a stack of fire elementals instead of a stack of wraiths, in the case where the collateral damage will be more useful than the higher strength the Wraiths will have. How many death promotions I take with him remains to be seen.

The only thing that's missing is an eater to cast Wonder multiple times on top of a captured city. I hate to think what the result of that might be!


Accompanying them also will eventually be Mardero, who will be able to cast Wither once he's levelled up a little. He'll be even later on the scene though. Although he's a demon and therefore cannot be hasted, he has a base movement of 2 already, so he'll keep up except in difficult terrain (where I can use the move-then-haste trick for the other units). I'll probably have Succubi with the same problem trailing along already so he won't hold anything up.


Next, 4 liches. These will stay at home for defense. They will all obviously take death 3, and I plan to give them all mobility as well. It's also pretty tempting to give them all Spell Extension 2 just to extend the range of defensive Wraiths, but it leaves less room for other promotions obviously. Otherwise they will take a range of utility spells, including (in approximate priority):

* At least two with Ice 3 (for snowfall), and possibly with Enchantment 3 as well if I can manage.
* One with Nature 3 (for vitalise).
* Law 3 (for Valor).
* Entropy 3 (for another source of Wither).
* Mind 3 (for Domination, possibly taking this promotion a few times...).
* Body 3 (Personally I think flesh golems aren't really profitable, dodginess with krakens aside, but I may change my mind).

Channeling II


Next, the core of the army, Mages. Every single mage will take death 2 and spell extension 2. Otherwise though there is a range of extra promotions they might be given:
* A good number of Fire 2, as fireballs are likely the only means I'll have of reducing city cultural defenses. Note that even summoner-fireballs still die after 1 turn, so I need to move potentially dangerously close to actually use them though. They do at least come with flying, which gives them an extra movement point (for a total range of 4 with spell extension 2) and ignores terrain penalties - allowing me to bombard from up to 5 tiles away (if I move - cast - move back).
* I'll consider the option of some pit fiends as an alternative to spectres. Being able to stay alive if they keep fighting and take promotions could be pretty awesome in theory, although in pracitice I've struggled to really make the most of it even against the AI. The temptation is higher though because I will have entropy 1 on a number of adepts already for the sake of rust.
* At least one capable of casting each of the following spells: Dispel Magic (to debuff), Regeneration, Shadowwalk.
* A handful to multiple-cast the following (if I can get access to them): Blinding Light, Maelstrom.
* Otherwise they will take combat promotions to buff the spectres.

At home, I'll have a mage capable of Dispel Magic permanently stationed near to each mana node I have, as I may wish to switch the nodes around quite frequently. I'll also have mages at home able to cast the following, (unless they're covered by Liches already): Hope, Flaming Arrows, Poison Blade, Mutate.


Also along for the ride will be Mobius Witches. These will be most useful early on for two reasons. One is that they appear as early as Knowledge of the Ether, but have chanelling 2, and can therefore cast level 2 spells long before I've managed to research sorcery. Second is that they can start with random level 1 promotions, allowing them to provide spheres that I don't have the mana nodes for, increasing the variety of spells available. I am unlikely to upgrade any to Eaters of Dreams or Liches, because by starting at level 4 with promotions spent they are initially 5 promotions (minus the number of free sphere promotions they get, but that's generally a lot less than 5) behind a mage of the same level. So although they may have a head start in number of levels, they will eventually fall well behind in promotions. So unless I happen to get one with a stack of the sorts of utility spells I'd like a Lich to have, they will stay witches. I expect there'll always be a few with spells I don't have access to otherwise, at least until quite late.


Ritualists will come along also to provide cheap access to an up-to-40% damage spell. Just 3 of these are enough to get everything reliably down to 60% strength, enough to wear it down on it's own but also good preparation for snowfall.


Succubi, as I mentioned earlier, will also come along to provide Charm.

Channeling I


Finally, adepts. These will tag along to cast the level 1 spells that I need (or are at least useful anyway) without bothering the mages to do it. Such spells and promitions include:
* Having Death 1 ups the skeleton count for the whole empire, and comes for free as well once I have the Tower of Necromancy so it will be everywhere.
* Haste - I'll probably have at least a few of capable of casting this, to allow various tricks with casting it in different places for different units.
* Floating eye - A few of these as well. These will replace hawks for scouting. I haven't checked yet whether summoner works to keep these around for longer or not? If it does, they can possibly stay home.
* All the following are also worth having access to in the field: Treetop Defence, Rust (multiple casters), Slow (multiple casters), Enchanted Blade (works on spectres, and cancels rust), Blur, Dance of Blades. Exactly which of those I can put together on the one adept is something to think about.
* All of the following are worth having access to at home: Spring, Sanctify, Loyalty, Courage, Inspiration (multiple casters of course), Wall of Stone (in a few key cities).


Of course, getting them all into this state is not straightforward. I'll plan units out to be destined for Eaters and Liches fairly early on - these will avoid spending any promotions away from their target set. The paths of adepts to mages is trickier, many level 1 spells don't lead to useful level 2 spells, and vice versa, so I'm bound to have some suboptimal spell promotions at various times, but that's no big deal. I'll likely have a few of the level 1 spells covered by mages most of the time.

I'm also aware of the fact that planning for the stage of the game where I have Strength of Will is not the most important thing to be doing. The time in between now and then will have a much bigger impact on the game. Still, it's fun to do.

[Caustic Soda]

Writing up long posts fo your late-game plans may not be an optimal use fo your time, but they're as fun to read as well as write

The plan seems overall sensible, if ambitious, but I do have a question. What are your plans for the building of Planar gates? Your mention of Moebius Witches makes this as appropriate a time as any to ask.

[Irgy]

Writing up long posts fo your late-game plans may not be an optimal use fo your time, but they're as fun to read as well as write

Thanks

The plan seems overall sensible, if ambitious

Ambitious yes, but I should stress that I don't necessarily expect to actually ever reach the exact setup described there, even given enough time. It's just a kind of gold standard that I'll keep in mind when giving out promotions to units.

What are your plans for the building of Planar gates? Your mention of Moebius Witches makes this as appropriate a time as any to ask.

Well, the long term plans are to build (whip) them everywhere, followed by building all the unit providing buildings I can. Most of the unit providing buildings are things I would want to build anyway. It's really just a question of timing after that.

To break it down:
* Public Baths, Gambling House, Carnival and Temple of the Veil all provide happiness. With Sacrifice the Weak, aristograrian farms and Slavery, I'm going to be very much limited by happiness before anything else. So these are all worth building anyway.
* Given I'm going to be building those buildings anyway, a planar gate (eventually) provides me with at least 4 decent units, making it worth the price. That it will double in value once I turn the Air Conditioning up to 50 is just a bonus.
* Given I'm going to build a gate anyway, Mage Guild provides a witch for *less* than the cost of an adept. Plus, being able to build adepts in any of my core cities is definately a good thing.

Grove and Obsidian Gate both provide great units, but require expensive techs that I wouldn't otherwise plan on researching particularly high priority, so they're likely to be missed. I'd go for those techs before, say, Divine Essence for Abashi, but definately after Strength of Will and Malevolent Designs.

However, in the short term, Planar Gates cost 201 hammers, and a settler costs 140. I'd rather a settler and a worker than a gate at this stage. So I'd say I'll start building gates once I have 8 or 9 cities, and have set the whip up with granary and smokehouse. And researched Sanitation so that I can afford to use a 6 or 7 population whip to build them. It's not that far away, but it's certainly not yet.

[Irgy]

So, good news and bad news, as they say. In the same screenshot even. See how much attention you're paying by whether you can guess what they both are (extra credit for suggesting something valid that I didn't even think of though):


The good news? Mana. I need more mana, and now I've found some. With this, I can upgrade a node to body once I get the chance and still have one spare to create a metamagic node once I get to Sorcery. There's nothing worse than having sorcery and not being able to create a metamagic node anywhere because your nodes are full already and you can't fix them without, well, a metamagic node. So you have to leave one unused. Two nodes also means that if I can manage to trade for Nature and Life magic - which both the Elohim and Ljosalfar will have both of eventually, I can start on the Tower of Alteration.

The bad news? Well, that big chunk of land I thought I might have in the southeast is looking smaller by the minute really isn't it? Maybe it expands out into a huge region connected by a narrow isthums, but it's looking more likely that it will simply close off fairly quickly.

Some other bad news that I originally missed: That Bannor scout is about to be eaten by a spider. In fact, since Mr Yellow has already played this turn, it's probably too late. This is a problem, because it will probably give the darn thing yet more promotions. If only I'd thought of it and warned him in time.

[Irgy]

I've been a bit slow on the updates as not so much is happening in game of particular note. A couple of highlights from last turn:


We're stalking the spider, trying to kill it. It just ate Mr Yellow's scout, and now it's on a forest hill. I'm going to move the two pyre zombies to different tiles (despite the explosive down side to doing so), so that when it attacks it moves onto a slightly less well defended tile. It will also cross a river, so we've got a decent shot of surviving anyway. Especially since pyre zombies are immune to the poison, making it 1 strength lower.

You can see the scout is likely to get eaten from the screenshot in a recent update mentioning the mana. I noticed as I was writing the post, and would have warned Mr Yellow about it, but it was already too late. I didn't particularly want his scout killed, I just wasn't paying enough attention. It's bad for me because the spider got another promotion out of it, as well as moving from a grassland to a forest hill.

Tongurstad has just killed a witch:


A fairly ridiculous option to choose as Sheaim, but there is no benefit to choosing the other as far as I'm aware, and I genuinely may make use of the temporary happiness for once.

As you can also see, the city is beseiged by barbarian units. Two skeletons, a goblin, and there's two more skeletons on the barrow. The pyre zombie is 7vs2 against the skeletons, but I'm going to wait for them to attack anyway. Next turn I expect one to attack and the other to wait, and if so I'll then finish off the waiting one so that the worker can get back to farming the floodplains.

[Irgy]

On the diplo front on the other hand, some intrigue:

I think there's a possibilty you can now.I've been negotiating with WK on possible ways he could help me and one was to open up a trade route to you through him and the elves.I would like to negotiate a copper loan here. I don't have any of it availible near me and need it badly to take on Thoth.

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]I can do that. I'll check in game each turn then for when the trade route becomes available, and offer it when it does. I'd still greatly appreciate open borders and a map trade by the way, if you're willing : )

I'm a little curious why WK isn't offering his own copper though? Not complaining about it particularly, it's just an indication there's more to the story than what I understand. Is it just that he doesn't want to visibly support you?[/COLOR]

I'm more than happy to lend the Bannor some copper to help them out. Thoth has yet to make contact with me so he can't really request I don't.

I also had a chat with WarriorKnight, and he failed to enlighten me as to what's wrong with his copper (I didn't ask directly though). He also asked me stuff about when I wanted the water mana and how far I was from Corruption of Spirit. I'm happy to answer questions generally but I do wonder why he wanted to know.

It also looks like I've got all of the 12 or so cities I've currently marked confirmed with WarriorKnight as places I can settle, and in addition I should probably be able to negotiate some of the land further north. I definately won't have a border with the elves by the sound of it, they appear to be north rather than northeast as I originally thought. It also appears that despite the jungle I'm really in the far southern end of the globe, as everyone else seems to be further north.

Also, more chitchat with Nytorion:

[COLOR="Lime"]Dear Irgy,

since I explored the sepulcher the "requires route" label has changed to "research: knowledge of the ether, research: necromancy", so sadly, it seems I will indeed need Necromancy to connect the death mana.[/COLOR]

I have to confess I've never actually explored the sepulcher before. Having just tested it in worldbuilder, you appear to be indeed correct. You actually need to build a death node there in fact, not just research the required technologies. It's like a raw mana node now, except one which may only be improved to one type.

With WarriorKnight settling his border city to Kabhalg rather soon, it should not take too long for us to be able to trade resources. Maybe, you can already use some of my mana, or my second sheep at this point; while I can't really use any of your mana at this point (don't have Knowledge of the Ether yet), I might be interested in happiness resources you have.

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]Well, maybe it's coming time to talk about trades already then. I'll have spare gold and gems available for trade fairly shortly, and a fair few other things (fish, clams, pigs, rice, dyes) available once I've settled the appropriate cities. I don't have my own sheep, although I don't greatly need health at this current time.

The more interesting thing though really is mana, and how you value mana trades. I'm going to be interested in most of your available mana at various points in time.

The easiest way to manage it I think is to consider any mana traded to be mana shared, regardless of the length of trade. So for instance if I lend you fire mana, I'd be happy to lend it again in the future and not consider it an extra trade. While on the other hand I only really gain any benefit from a second death mana if it is loaned on a more permanent basis - although obviously I'd give it back at times so you could take death promotions, and even loan you my own for the same period of time so you can get some for free.

If you have a different approach or opinion that's ok too, I'm just giving a starting point for discussion.[/COLOR]