[SPOILERS] Emissaries from the blighted lands; Mardoc and Jkaen take on the world!

[Jkaen]

Sorry my updates in all games have been a bit poo recently.

We have a short term tech path plan we are working towards that gets the basics of the economy, protection and religion rolling. I think we will take stock once we reach there and plan accordingly.

Right now my expansion plans are to head towards settle near and secure the bronze to power up the warriors.

Not done a turn by turn plan of how this will work, and to be honest never done micro in this detail, but hunter 1 will hopefully secure the west flank as the dead one was doing, hunter 2 and griffon will go check out around the new site I am heading too.

Improvement wise I can still mainly get away with working pre-improved tiles. We have the road build between Yin and Yang and Yin and Mind. I think the Yang-Body highway is nearing completion now too

[Mardoc]

If I'd look for anything its a plan. As in, we'd like to be at X by Y. Then lay out how you intend to get there. That way I can obnoxiously poke holes in it and hopefully we all learn something. I don't get the sense here at the moment that the plan is much beyond "At some later date we will have Vampires and pwn everyone." Fortunately, that's got a decent chance of working. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a huge chance of working if someone else manages to find you before then and kill you dead.

Hmm. It's true, the more we plan the more likely we are to win. I'll give you what I think needs to be the current focus, near 100%: REX. We'd like to fill our corner and start encroaching on our foes by ASAP. So perhaps the first thing to work on is dotmapping. Getting a bunch of new cities and resources will put us in a much better position.

My basic REX plan is simple; every city starts with a Governor's Manor and grows to its happy cap, then spams a combination of Bloodpets, Workers, and Settlers. Even at size 3, GManor pays itself back in 15 turns, but I expect to be hooking up happiness fairly quickly, as we grow into resource-laden areas.

Techwise, it's Calendar, Bronze Working, Mysticism, Way of the Forests. After that...I think we'll still be REXing, so we'll want to work on things that don't require buildings to benefit us. Probably it makes most sense to head to Priesthood for Jkaen's panic button, then evaluate. One possibility after Priesthood is to go ahead and grab some more religions; OO needs to be in our bag of tricks given the number of lakes, AV will be excellent collateral for everywhere else, and SacWeak will be great for me. Other than that? Empy? Order? Esus would be wonderful, although I haven't considered how Nox Noctis would work with a teamer.

The other possibility, if we don't have to start stacking up the Malakim bag of tricks, is to go for more econ. Currency and Trade go well with a REX plan, as does Construction -> Sanitation (doubly so when we're running an aristocracy econ). Festivals into Drama would go well with Con -> San; we could perhaps bulb Sanitation with the GArt, and the ability to build culture would be useful if religions are coming too slowly.

And of course at some point we need to go up to Feudalism/Warfare so I can start drafting Vamps. I think that ought to wait a while, though. There's not a lot of point in that ability until I have the cities to support Vamp drafting and Feasting. I think it ought to wait until after I'm in Sacrifice the Weak, if possible; for the medium term we'll rely on Malakim priests and the barbs for our security.

I think I'm leaning toward sticking with an econ focus at the moment, one designed to mesh with REX, which would look something like this:
Calendar -> Mysticism -> Bronze Working -> Way of the Forests -> Priesthood -> Festivals -> Drama -> Masonry -> Construction -> Sanitation (bulbed if possible) -> Writing -> HBR -> Trade.

That's a very long tech path, though, so we'll need to remain flexible. And it points out the weakness we knew we'd have, that we want to grab most of the tech tree to fully utilize both civs' bag of tricks. Which is why I think an econ focus is the right answer for now, to make it easier to stock up.

[Jkaen]

While I obviously would like to start playing with my toys sooner rather than later, I do have to admit that getting the econ running sooner rather than later makes the most sense.

As for target religions, all the water does make OO appealing, but having started playing SP a bit more lately, I am getting a bit of a mancrush for Chalid but I guess that is a fair way off

[Mardoc]

As for target religions, all the water does make OO appealing, but having started playing SP a bit more lately, I am getting a bit of a mancrush for Chalid but I guess that is a fair way off

I like Chalid, but I think this may be the worst situation to grab him. A Huge map, so he'll be often out of position (and a much smaller percentage of any wars, regardless). With the Malakim, who really want to stack up toys from all religions, not get stuck in one. And with mana nodes already set, and so far no sign of a metamagic node.

As for OO - I'm sure it's not worth sticking with forever. Just long enough to pile up a few Cultists and some Drowns/Stygians. Basically I think it's not worth you grabbing heroes, instead you should be getting some of everything. +10% from stonewardens, +1 Str from Confessors, Ring of Flames, Tsunami, Blinding Light, Tigers and trees, etc and so on. Plus whatever tricks we can do with upgrading Lightbringers to Rangers, Mages, etc. It all adds up to a lot of options.

[Jkaen]

You may be right.

There is an unimproved mana node NW of Yin though in the 2nd ring if you didn't spot it.

[Jkaen]

What do you think of the copper site as my super discipline city btw?

The problem with running the altar is that I need a city with lots of food to run all the priest specialists the altar lets me, but with lots of production to get the bonus xp on the troops built there.

I guess since we are talking about a gotta get them all approach to religion I may be able to run a GP farm based off temples and leave the altars in a production city.

[Mardoc]

What do you think of the copper site as my super discipline city btw?

I hadn't thought about it much. But now that I do, I think I like that. Subject to changing opinion after looking at the save again, if there's an even better site somewhere. The copper site will be an excellent production site, mixing excellent production with +XP on your main military units is a good combo. It might even make sense to simply mass produce Lightbringers from there; if we can get to 1/turn, that ought to be most of your military for most of the game, really. Options including all the priests, mages, stygians, paramanders, crusaders, and rangers, starting with potentially 10+ XP, Mobility, and Potency? That's very nice. :D

And yes, I think you ought to be able to manage a priest GP farm elsewhere, using some combo of lots of temples (which you'll want for happiness anyway) and Theocracy (later).

[Jkaen]

Well to keep Gaspars interest levels up, here is your chance to go dot map crazy! (Its city 3 I am talking about grabbing next to be my super pump city)

Looking at getting another 2 or 3 warriors then will sned out a settler

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[Mardoc]

Sorry Jkaen, but I've got a nasty headache tonight, won't be commenting on your dotmap just yet. Hopefully tomorrow works better.

Gaspar, have a picture.

[Mardoc]

Nothing much new. Jkaen flew a hawk from Body, and found this stuff:



There's goblins everywhere, but at the moment they're just becoming XP, not threats. Eventually we ought to get the hunters down here to collect the prizes, but they're keeping plenty busy with the goblins for now. They need XP before they can get the elephants anyway.

Thoth's (well, ok, it's a guess, but he's the freakin' Lanun and doing well on score) GNP is over 100. Darrellios is much less of a threat, it seems. I'm not sure what's going on over in horseland - maybe Darrell wised up after I killed his archers and his choke is still ongoing?

I've a scout being born at the end of this turn, he'll head up toward this area to explore the hut - that way Jkaen can fogbust to the copper site and keep my scout alive with the same hawk.



Calendar's nearly in, after which we'll head toward Mysticism. Bronze and Way of the Forests will be our next two techs, order dependent on the rate of Mala settler production.