[SPOILERS] Dark Age of Capria

[xenin]

Yeah, most FfH wonders are pretty crappy, and plenty of them carry other requirements that also lessens the value of IND - eg the Great Library requires three libraries in the empire. So PHI saves 180 hammers over three cities, while IND saves 120 or so in a single city.

Heron Throne is basically Maoi, but as a world wonder. It doesn't benefit the rest of the empire.

But I think IND also gives discounts on the towers.

You might want to check the Learning Capria SG that Brian, Hart, Haphazard, and I ran. We had quite a bit of discussion there about the wonders.

Yeah, it does work on the towers I think. But it's still probably worse for a tower victory than say financial. That thread is like 50 pages but I might have a look when I've got some time

Anyway, we had another quick turn today. One bit of squishing to do:



I don't really understand why the other players are having such big difficulties with the barbs; this is a no lairs monarch game. Probably they're just getting unlucky but Cromagnumpi mentioned losing a drill warrior, and I have no idea why you'd ever promote down the drill line at this stage of the game. It's also possible that it's all exaggeration but from the power graphs people really are losing warriors:

[kjn]

I think you have your answer in the power graph.

[xenin]

Not a lot happening at the minute. I did go with the Brewing house in the capital, but I microed it slightly wrong - could have had growth sync with the completion by working the deer instead of a farm for 3 turns, but I forgot that the chop hammers would get the production bonuses so thought it was impossible. Oh well, going to have to deal with capital being unhappy for one turn:



Unhealthiness will be solved by the incoming rice (just needs a road) and the deer at the capital getting camped when hunting finishes.

I think after hunting I'm going to go for FoL instead of bronze; I could really use the border pops at this point and my cities are rapidly approaching happy caps. Unfortunately the planned copper city is rather junk:



Basically not worth settling without bronze, so it's going to get delayed a little bit. I could also move it to A or B and pop borders via leaves but both those spots have their own problems. I'll probably stick a filler in between Camelot and Humberton Keep at the cotswold village spot you can see in the first screenshot that can work a bunch of cottages for the capital and churn garrison warriors for all eternity. Once hunting is in my scouting will improve pretty dramatically and I can look for city sites to the north.

Demos after ending turn:



Meta thoughts: this map is big. 2099 land tiles = 350 per player. That's over 17 non-overlapping cities, more when you consider some will be coastal. It's also flat and on monarch. Conclusion: spam cities. Early fighting is going to be crap for anyone involved. Have to try and keep up with expansive Hippus. Yes I'm still bitter I didn't get Rhoanna. There's also easily enough space for someone to get enough land to tech peacefully to Strength of Will, so need to keep an eye on ToM beelines. I don't think Mardoc has placed the mana nodes particularly strategically, because there are two right outside Cromagnumpi's capital, so it may be luck whether people have access to four nodes without going conquering.

Random postscript: I don't know what is going on over in Sheaim land, but Cromagnumpi's civics are unchanged since turn 1:



No god king? No agrarianism? Does he loathe anarchy that much or is he doing the world's weirdest beeline?

[xenin]

Hunting is in:



I started a lodge in Humberton Keep, but it's still 8 turns away

Empire overview:



You can see a little micro mistake I made in the north, where I'm working an unimproved tile. It's because I needed a 100% gold turn to get through WotF, so I wanted the capital to work the incense tile to get the god king bonus. What I should have done was to keep at 100% science until that farm is done, then Ludlow can work that while the capital works the incense.

Demographics are tasty due to the 100% gold turn:

[xenin]

I was bored and thinking about the possibilities for people to rush ToM on this map, so I looked up everyone's mana types. Conclusions for future reference:

Bannor/Malakim can build tower of divination with 2 mana nodes only.

Assuming no mana trades, which towers can each civ build given that they only have 3 mana nodes?

Bannor lack Alteration & Necromancy
Hippus lack Divination & Necromancy
Malakim lack Elementalism & Necromancy
Luchiurp lack Divination & Necromancy
Sheaim lack Divination & Alternation
Elohim lack Necromancy

Ways to get each mana:

Divination:
Order Shrine
Empyrean Shrine

Alteration:
Tomb of Succellus
FoL shrine

Elementalism:
RoK shrine
Pyre of the Seraphic
OO shrine

Necromancy:
Soul Forge
Broken Sepulcher
AV shrine
Esus shrine

I normally think that only 3 nodes rules out tower victory but it looks like there are actually quite a few cases where you can do it anyway. And I haven't considered mana trades, which you can probably sucker someone into if necessary.

You can also summon Basium for the angelic palace mana, but I can't remember what that is right now. Also I have some sneaking feeling that there are unique features that give spirit/enchantment mana, but I'm not sure if I'm thinking of a modmod. Anyone?

[xenin]

Another turn today, another barb warrior incoming:



He'll get squished pretty much wherever he goes, the river shouldn't be a problem for the c2 shock warrior waiting in Humberton Keep

In foreign news rival worst mfg is at 20 and crop yield at 26. My capital alone is producing 19 base hammers (=28 with god king) and 29 food and I'm fairly sure everyone has mirrored capitals... I don't know what's going on out there. Is/was someone getting warrior choked?

[xenin]

Some more barbs meet their inevitable doom:





Ludlow is working a bare tile over the farm for one turn to get to 49/50 on the worker at end of turn and get the maximum food -> hammer conversion in case FoL is founded here and I need to get a fast temple out:



...and at end of turn it is:



I actually wanted it badly in Humberton Keep, but it's not the end of the world. Disciple will head there instead. It looks like everyone went for religions at the same time here, all three of the early ones are now gone. Tholal got RoK but I'm not sure who got OO as they haven't revolted yet (which presumably rules out nabaxo at least). If they don't revolt in a few turns I'll go back and check score increases to try and find out who it was.

Demos after end of turn:

[xenin]

Overdue an update, but that's what exams do to you. The lack of time is also visible in the sloppiness of my play; I've lost most if not all of my lead over the Hippus.

Anyway, what's happened since I last updated?

Lost a warrior to a lion at pretty good odds on the defence, pretty annoying since I'm too warrior light so settling will have to be delayed while more are produced. You can also see the scientist in the log, academy went up in the capital this turn.



Found this when I logged in on t72:



I decided to take it, since I saw a warrior of his heading north past me and I could really use some information on that. In retrospect with hawks out next turn it was probably not a great plan. Oh well. It looks like he had previous traded maps with Yell0w, who is confirmed as the neighbour beyond Cromagnumpi. Some newly revealed terrain:











Assorted thoughts: Cromagnumpi's capital is only size 6. Ouch. Everyone else in the game is up at 8 or 9 right now. Both Cromagnumpi and Yell0w are at 3 cities, and probably will struggle to catch up. For some reason I'm hugely closer to my neighbours than the Cromagnumpi-Yell0w distance - there's 25 tiles between their capitals while I'm 13 from Cromagnumpi's. I don't know the exact distance to Nabaxo's capital, but it looks like we have each have first ring from the capital towards each other, and our borders are now 4 tiles apart, so it'll be something like 13 capital-capital.

Leaves holy city going in Ludlow has actually been even more annoying than I anticipated, even with the spiritual temple bonus. Temple is finally done:



I need a couple of disciples asap, so Ludlow will stay in its incredible max hammer configuration :



I also forgot incense doesn't count as a resource until philosophy, so the temple didn't add a happy like I was expecting, not sure how to deal with that yet.

Demos (after end turn) are nice, back to top GNP now academy is in and science is back on. Distorted a little bit by some actual culture generation now of course:

[xenin]

Time for a ten second update!

Barbarians to the south:



Barbarians to the north:



Uh-oh-the-hippus-have-aristocracy-and-there-are-financial-aristofarms-everywhere in a screenshot:

[xenin]

Some more goodies:



Here's a shot of the north:



It should be sealed off to nabaxo in ~10 turns. He can try and start a war over it, but I'm #1 in power, I've got bronze weapons and he doesn't, and I've got hawks to see anything incoming.

A graphical summary of the game so far:



Hippus GNP is getting a little scary though; his mfg has plummeted so he's basically only working aristofarms, but he's definitely researching significantly more than me now. I'm torn on how long to hold out in God King for.

A couple of quick mechanics questions if anyone is around:

1) healing for everyone takes place after the barbs move right?
2) does FFH change the self-built wonder failgold mechanic at all? Marble + industrious is a pretty tempting combination...