Kyan Rhoentach: YY OF ZZ IN XX {SPOILERS}

[Kyan]

Off-topic, but some light entertainment regarding gaming.

Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIiUsbOO24

[Thoth]

Off-topic, but some light entertainment regarding gaming.

Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIiUsbOO24

[Kyan]

I have the turn. Update will be done this evening. It was a very eventful turn.

Got a few key decisions to make. Need to take some time to assess before moving on.

[Kyan]

Blighted Traveller headed into the wilderness and found a hut.

Now that is nice. Would have been around 12 turns to tech this . Although we have two turns invested into Mysticism, I immediately swapped our tech path to:



Code of Laws (for aristocracy) kickstarts our economy. After that, we get crafting and mining and then see how the land lies. If I can just persuade the orcs to leave us alone, our economy is going to explode. Of course, compared to getting like 7 free techs and 15 free archers, i'm not sure how it compares, I guess we'll see. I still stand by that if we can survive the initial choke attempts from Ellimist, we're in a super strong position.

That's why we're defending the choke point so tightly. The 4 barbarians in 3 turns on the eastern border aren't helping, but with a bit of careful positioning, we may be able to leverage that into some more cover promotions just in case.

His economy can easily be repaired by disbanding units but it won't be as strong as ours at any point in the game. We will easily make up and then overtake on the beaker count. He may have a pretty big snowball but we just lit a match. Let's see if we can't make it something more.

[Tasunke]

Hmm. You know that Ellimist's archer can go through the -> Gold -> City Spot gap right?

the "You Shall Not Pass!" gap he could easily avoid by going a bit south to our future gold mine.

(hmm, though we might be better off to avoid the gold if we are going COL first XD)

[Tasunke]

Therefore the northern hill *might* be the better spot, or even somewhere else entirely.

But using our next settler to settle near the gold mine might not be the best move at this time (given tech decisions)

[Kyan]

Hmm. You know that Ellimist's archer can go through the -> Gold -> City Spot gap right?

the "You Shall Not Pass!" gap he could easily avoid by going a bit south to our future gold mine.

(hmm, though we might be better off to avoid the gold if we are going COL first XD)

You mean the oasis tile directly next to my units? The desert -25% defence oasis?

Let's hope he makes that mistake.

Why would we avoid the gold? I'm happy to be persuaded but would like to hear alternatives if so. Just because we can super-charge our economy early, doesn't mean we shouldn't also add a turbo. On another positive note, it's extremely defensible at a time when our forces are going to need to be as efficient as possible.

[Tasunke]

Hmm. Yes I think you are right. We don't quite have enough forces at the moment to push north ... and you are totally right that he would need to move into the Oasis in order to reach the gold (and city spot) how could I have missed that?

In any case, even though we will be delaying mining, its still the best spot for now (because it won't require a larger army to defend).

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While we are on the subject however ... is it really worth it to hold off on mining just to get Aristo early?

I mean clearly Aristo is awesome, but is it awesome enough to delay an easy gold mine? Just something to think about I suppose. It could be one of those things like me missing the full nature of the hot gates (ie we already have enough farms to make more commerce than a gold mine does), but with only 2 cities I think its on the borderline between "better than" and "almost as good as" a gold mine.

This being said, the gold hill is still fairly productive commerce wise even without the mine, and therefore should be of some use even before we get the mine going.

Anyways, the easiest answer would be Aristo first, but just wanted to see if anyone else had considered the mining before CoL approach, and weighed the pros and cons.

(mining would also give us forest chop, which would help with any forest expansion. On the other hand, expanding to the north takes more soldiers, which means more time ... perhaps time enough to see both CoL and mining researched?)
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Anyways, as far as the cities go, I now agree that the hill south of gold is the best choice, while something near the northern incense would be a good fourth city, and something *near* the northern hill would make a good fifth city. (near as in either east, or north, or likely north east. Something near the lake, so we can start farming it almost immediately-by then-)

[Kyan]

Ellimist's Archer, despite my repeated warnings of his impending doom, decided I was bluffing and approached the hot gates.

SEXY JIM FEARS NO ORC. That's enough xp for Combat 3 + Cover. World spell is intact. Good turn.

[Kyan]

Hmm, this is probably just me but looking at that screenshot, at the tile yields on the tiles outside the culture. Do they all look wrong to you?

I'm guessing it's just a side affect of the golden age ending and the graphics not updating on some tiles. I guess i'll see next turn.