Green as they come: Hiding Kneel plays the Ljosalfar [SPOILERS]

[HidingKneel]

What about additional heroic strength/defense promotions, since Gilden already has 1 first strike? Is their lack of versatility not worth it?

Heroic strength 1 would slightly increase the odds of Gilden taking this city (which are pretty good in any case). But in the long run, I think Gilden's main use is as a stack defender (or a martyr, so we can built the shrine of the champion in Evermore). I think drill promotions are better than heroic defense for that, and will also increase our odds of taking the city.

[HidingKneel]

Well, turns have been coming in at a not-so-steady clip, but I've been rather lax on the updates lately. Time to remedy that.

First, there's been a flurry of diplomacy:

HidingKneel,

You're right that I should have included Tholal. I copied my last email and sent it to him this turn. Hawk intel might be useful. I'm still willing to provide a Kilmorph temple, and it's on my todo list for the near future, as well as additional settlers.

I am not mistaken about Basium's immortality. The only bug that EITB introduced was granting it for kills that should not have qualified(such as lizards.) I had a chat with Sareln about this subject, which is where I got my information from about which kills should qualify him.

I do expect Kyan to go for Empyrean next, and probably kilmorph as well. Militarily, I expect him to strike at my Kurioate holdings. I'm not worried about losing those, they cost me a fortune in maintenance(over 10 gold each) and do not have access to my home cities or religions.

I have thought about it, and I think that my best move, if given the opportunity, is hiring a stack of wolf riders and just overwhelm him. He's likely to send most of his angels away from home pretty soon, and that would provide the opportunity to raze his best cities. If you, Tholal, and Weezel each contribute some gold, I'd be able to hire 20-50 wolf riders, and I'm willing to raze (or give away) any captured cities.

Ellimist

Chief Urag,



The Ljosalfar would be pleased to cooperate in funding your military adventure against the horselords. However, we will require some assurances.



a) First, we wish to ensure that all participants in our alliance are contributing their fair share. Assuming the Malakim and Khazad are with us, we propose the following: Draft an estimate for how much gold you think will be required to obtain an adequate force. This cost will be divided equally, so that each of us pays one quarter of it.



b) The military force to be assembled under this arrangement may only be used against the Hippus and the Mercurians. It may never be turned against a member of our alliance, even if the Hippus are defeated.

We will see what we can do regarding hawk intelligence. Our first priority is to make contact with the Khazad and Malakim. Afterwards, we can send a hunter in Kyan's direction. Is there a particular part of the Hippus territory that you would be most interested in keeping tabs on?

HK, advisor to the Queen

P.S. Are you sure about Basium's immortality? I ran a test using worldbuilder, giving myself Basium and killing a barbarian imp: no immortality. Also, IIRC Basium's immortality was mentioned in the changelog for EitB v8, before you and Bob discovered the bug.

HidingKneel,

First of all, I apologize that I didn't get the save to you at a reasonable time tonight.

Second, you were the only person to reply (so far) to my last message, so I do not know how receptive the other two players will be. Weezel at least seems to recognize the danger of leaving the Mercurians unchecked, but Tholal is a mystery. He's sitting on 1295 gold right now, so he may be underestimating the danger.

I am not certain but you may be able to make contact with either Kyan(north) or Tholal(south) if you base a hawk out of my Kurioate cities . A hawk in my home area may be able to reach the Malakim to the north. For now, I am most interested in finding out more about where the Hippus/Mercurian cities and armies are located. I expect them to send their starting angels against either myself or Tholal very soon, and the ideal time to strike will be just before or just after they reach their target. While I am genuinely not worried about losing my Kurioate cities, (they are approximately break-even for commerce for me right now,) it would be helpful to know if/when to expect them to arrive.

I expected you to request some assurances, and I am okay with your suggestions (assuming that the other two choose to join in. If it ends up being a bilateral thing, I have some suggested modifications.) I am worried that the other two may not be willing to entrust me with such a task. If it turns out that the two of us foot the entire bill, we should focus on trying to get some profit out of the situation.

There is another assurance I would like to offer you as well. When I first proposed the offer of cooperating with you, I was expecting to leverage the Mercurians into a near-invincible late game position. Unlike my position in FFH-9, there was no pressure for me to be aggressive early, because I expected my position to become infinitely stronger after the Gate. The elves have a very strong late game, but it's nothing compared to a Jonas-Basium pairing on a map this large. Obviously, this didn't work out for me, and the requirement to be aggressive early has come crashing back down on me thanks to my Barbarian trait and lack of libraries. I still have every intention of continuing to honor our agreement, even if we are successful in clipping Kyan's wings. I want to reassure you that I still value my earlier commitment. Even if I wanted to attack you, it would make no sense to target you rather than the others due to Gilden, archers, your worldspell, etc.

Ellimist

Chief Urag,



It sounds like it would be good to get the Khazad in on this venture, but the dwarves may be a stingy lot. It might be helpful to have the Ljosalfar broach the matter with them; they might be more inclined to trust us.



With your permission, I'll try basing a hawk in one of your cities next turn, and try to make contact with the Malakim or Khazad. Do we understand correctly that you do not have any hawks of your own? We only have one at the moment. Obviously we can increase that number, but for the moment our only hunting lodge is in a city which is busy training priests.

I see that the Mercurians founded their city this past turn. Do you know where it is located?

Please keep us apprised of the status of your diplomacy with our other potential allies. It would also be helpful to have an idea of when you plan to strike, and how expensive you expect the venture to be. It will probably take us a number of turns to gather the gold for our contribution.

HK, Advisor to the Queen

Hmm... it occurs to me now that Kyan might decide to strike Tholal, to grab himself a core for Ichabod. Something worth bringing up when I make contact with the Khazad.

Domestically, there is not much going on. Gilden and company are healing up, preparing for another strike against that barbarian city. Unfortunately it looks like that might take a while!



Screenshot from EOT:



Festivals is in, animal husbandry comes in next turn. After that, I'll need to decide if I'm going after AV (KotE -> WotW -> CoS) or Esus (writing -> HBR -> trade -> WotW -> deception). Priests are under construction in Evermore and Bruti.

[HidingKneel]

Another turn played. The big news is our new city:



A little isolated, but will have three 3-food tiles to work after next turn, so it should be able to develop quickly.

Also, I spotted some rare wildlife:



Hmm... that's a gorilla, wolf, and bear I've spotted so far. I get tigers for free, so if I get moving I've got a nonzero shot at building the Menagerie.
First, my recon units will require the proper training. So I teched animal husbandry this turn. The tech came in fast, revealing some horses.
Here's one:



That's the clincher: I'll definitely want to put a city on that plains hill in the near future to work the horses, incense, and to claim that rice for Evermore's Deruptus.

More horses over here by Dendrom:



Yonna finished an archery range this turn. Once I've pastured the horses and put a mine on that (ancient!) forested plains hill, it ought to be able to turn out archers in two turns. Which is good news for my expansion plans.

Diplomacy with Ellimist:

HK,

Got a reply back from Tholal. My impression is that he doesn't realize how dangerous the Mercurians are, but I may be able to convince him.

Where would you like your next two settlers sent?

Ellimist,

Since you didn't raise any objections this turn, I took the liberty of interpreting your previous message as an invitation to base a hawk in one of the former Kuriotate cities. It didn't seem likely that I'd be able to reach the Khazad by hawk, so I sent a bird north from Sanguine. It did not yield any new information (it does not look like the Hippus have settled any further south, or that there is a Mercurian raiding party bearing down on you in the immediate future).

If it would be helpful to you, we can produce a few hawks in Bruti and station them in your cities to keep a lookout for incoming Mercurian forces. That will have to wait a few turns, though.

As for the settlers: our first priority is the coastal plains hill to the southeast of Bruti (just south of the mana node). For a second site (likely to be settled earlier as it will be easier for you to reach), somewhere a few tiles east of the first city that you built for us. We will need to deliberate a bit on the exact location.

HK, Advisor to the Queen

So, I'm now at seven cities. Four more will be added soon: two from Ellimist, one from my settler in Eaca, and one from Gilden's conquest of Ultigar. I'm going to need more of everything, especially workers. I think I'll put Eaca on worker detail after this settler is complete; it should be able to get them out in two turns.

Not sure where that second city Ellimist is promising should go (that cotton city to our northwest will need to be settled by us, since it's within our culture now). I'll go over some possibilities in the next update.

Meanwhile, the tech situation: with animal husbandry in, I've finished up our "early techs". I'm thinking Esus is a pipe dream, and I should get to the more realistic business of devil-worshipping. Plus, if we're going to keep expanding, we're going to want water mana pretty soon. So I'll probably start KotE next turn. But I'll run 0% science... need to save some gold to pay Ellimist for the cities at least, and possibly a lot more gold to help fund his invasion of Kyan. I hope we can get the other players on board for that. It sounds like it's going to require overwhelming force, which won't come cheap.

[Merovech]

Could he walk the settler to the cotton city location, then gift the settler to you so that you found the city?

[Mardoc]

Could he walk the settler to the cotton city location, then gift the settler to you so that you found the city?

Units can't be gifted in FFH.

[HidingKneel]

Finally got turn 80. Opened with some diplomacy from Ellimist:



I send the following in response by email:

Chief Urag,

Our people will rejoice to hear that the settlers are incoming. Where and when should our escorts meet them? We can dispatch an archer from Eodd (the last city that you built for us), and have a fawn who will reach that city on turn 83.

One thing to be wary of: there are some animals meandering about the woods east of Eodd. Please do not harm them; we have dispatched one of our hunters to lead them out of the way.

(Most likely, this will be finished before you even reach the site.)

More details to follow.

HK, Advisor to the Queen

So, the question is where to plant that city east of Eodd. Let's have a look:



The two sites that jump out at me are the riverside plains hill just east of the gold (pros: plains hill + gold mine + two bronze mines = lots of production, fresh water. Cons: Lots of overlap with Eodd, no food resources to help it grow quickly) and the forest north of the corn (Pros: will grow quickly with corn farm, can claim the clams after researching fishing. Cons: no fresh water, doesn't come with a free trade connection). What do you think, Commodore? Plan A? Plan B? Or something else I'm not seeing?

Running 100% gold for the moment. I'll probably turn science back on at turn 82, if I don't hear anything more about the anti-Kyan alliance.

Oh, and we got our first priest of leaves at EOT . Time to plant some trees.

[Commodore]

Food is paramount to actually working all those lovely tiles, I'd got for the corn spot.

[HidingKneel]

Turnpace has really fallen apart. (Not that I'm entirely innocent in the matter ) Anyways, I hope that's temporary. The game is getting more and more interesting.

So, turn 81. First, the event logs had news: Ellimist built Form of the Titan, and Weezel built the Tablets of Bambur. The Titan's a nice wonder, and the tablets aren't bad either considering half the world has adopted Kilmorph.

Our first priest is out blooming:



We'll get another one at the end of next turn, and a third two turns after that. Let's get this economic juggernaut rolling.

Those settlers Ellimist is sending down will be arriving soon:



Looks like they're safe (since skeletons don't attack barbarian civs), but I'm sending an archer to meet them just to be sure. Also getting roads in place so that once the settlers reach Eodd, they can move speedily to their ultimate destinations (which will be connected to our trade network).

Meanwhile, my hunter is healed up and started north. Plan is to catch the wolf and promote to C2, and then catch the gorilla. Then he can go south to catch that bear. We can send them all to Evermore, which will need a carnival in the near future.

Got the following message from Ellimist:

I'm sending this message to every player except Kyan (and Ichabod.) I have already discussed with each of you some of the challenges that we face if we want to overcome Kyan's turn 73 completion of the Mercurian Gate. So far, he seems to be planning to exploit his Financial trait and dual-economy to acquire the (extremely powerful) late game Mercurian units. If he is able to accomplish this, I challenge any of you to come up with a scenario where he doesn't win, this map is huge and it will require no effort to isolate and eliminate the rest of us one at a time.

I have considered hiring a large number of wolf riders, which hopefully can hit Kyan soon enough and hard enough to eliminate him as a threat. I estimate that it will require at least 40 (preferably 50 or 60) wolf riders to overcome the initial Mercurian units, any additional angels, as well as the Hippus units with Warcry. Split evenly four directions, this will require an investment of 600-900 gold per person. Additional upkeep costs borne by the Clan will not be passed on to the others, but may be offset by capture and pillage gold.

The following terms were proposed, and I am willing to abide by them:

a) First, we wish to ensure that all participants in our alliance are contributing their fair share. Assuming that everybody participates, we propose the following: Draft an estimate for how much gold you think will be required to obtain an adequate force. This cost will be divided equally, so that each of us pays one quarter of it.

b) The military force to be assembled under this arrangement may never be turned against a member of the alliance, even if the Hippus are defeated.

In addition, I am willing to raze every city I capture. If somebody does opt out, I have little interest in keeping the captured cities but would be willing to give them to those that do participate.

For now, I need to know who is willing to participate. Let's aim for a total of 50 wolf riders, at a cost of 750 gold per person. Ideally, they would be hired on turn 88, but this may be sooner than some of you can provide the gold.

If you have a better plan, this is the time to share it.

If you have any objections, this is the time to say so.

Ellimist

Looks like I can just barely make that deadline. Painful to turn science off for so many turns. But hopefully everyone will contribute, so everyone will be hurt by it. Especially Kyan and Ichabod .

My response:

Ellimist,

As indicated earlier, the Ljosalfar stand behind you. We started saving gold last turn, and it looks like we will just barely be able to scrape together 750 gp in the timeframe you've proposed (given to you on turn 87, in time to be spent on turn 88).

However, this means we will be slightly late in paying for the settlers you're sending our way. By our estimate, those cities can be settled on turn 87 and turn 88, but our payment for them will probably need to be delayed until turns 88 and 89.

Regarding those settlers: our aerial reconnaissance indicates that there is a skeleton to their south-east-east. Assuming the orcs have no fear of such creatures, your way to Eodd is clear, and you should be able to reach the city by turn 85. Just in case, we've dispatched an archer from the city to be your escort: it will meet you next turn. Once you reach Eodd, send one of the settlers five tiles to the east, and plant a city north of the corn. The other settler should travel south to the coastal plains hill we mentioned earlier (just south of the desert mana node). Both paths should be roaded at that point.

Also: allow us to once again offer the services of Ljosalfar hawks. We will be free to train more of them starting on turn 83. If there is any particular area near your territory that you would like to have eyes on, let us know.

HK, Advisor to the Queen

Hmm... our empire is getting big enough that a screenshot of the core doesn't do it justice anymore. Here's the overview:

[HidingKneel]

Turn 82 played. Not much to report. Ellimist says that the Malakim have joined the alliance, and that he hasn't yet heard from the Khazad. Hopefully Tholal will get on board as well. He's quite likely to be the earliest target if we don't act soon.

Domestically, what have we got? Down by Ultigar, Gilden almost got himself killed:



Hmm... any chance the AI will attack out in this situation? Gilden's too weak to fight, and his defender is already a bit wounded. Assuming I don't lose him between turns, I'll promote to Drill II, heal a few more turns, and then finish conquering the city.

Up in the northeast we're catching animals:



Hmm... looks like there's a dungeon to pop out past that gorilla. Not sure if I want to risk my hunters/fawns on that right now, though. Maybe a little later when I can bring tiger support.

Speaking of which, I produced another priest of leaves this turn, along with a settler (bound for the cotton site). Now it's time for Eaca to get in the business of spamming workers... need more of them pretty much everywhere.

[HidingKneel]

Another two turns played. Not much happened on turn 83, so I'll focus on turn 84. First, we caught ourselves a wolf:



Consider that a warm-up for catching the gorilla. I'm not really sure there's much point in hunting these things down: Evermore's the only city we have that's near its happy cap, and it's not going to have enough food to grow much bigger.

Our other recon units are hunting more dangerous game:



We also built ourselves a new city:



Founded on the cotton. It should grow quickly once we pasture that pig up north.

Diplomacy with Ellimist has taken a strange turn:

Some quick questions:

1) Have you decided where exactly you want the settlers to go?

2) If an opportunity presents itself, how willing are you to utilize your worldspell offensively?

3) Are you interested in a joint military action against Weezel, attacking from the north and south simultaneously?

Use my worldspell offensively... well, I guess Ellimist could build a couple of settlers, build cities near Kyan, gift them to me, and then have me make trouble with a bunch of angry treants. I can see that arrangement going very well for Ellimist, but have trouble seeing how it could possibly go well for us. We'd seriously injure our economy (our cities are becoming dependent on ancient forests for food), and without our deterrent we'd be a much softer target for Ellimist later. And it's not like we could gain much from the conflict: Kyan's as far from us as anyone, so we wouldn't want to keep any of his cities.

And what's this about Weezel? Seems like Ellimist is getting ahead of himself. Is he talking about when/if Kyan is eliminated? I'm not sure I like the idea of taking Weezel out at that point... need someone to put a check on Ellimist's power, since we're not likely to be able to do that ourselves. Ideally I'd like to stay out of all wars and just build my enemies to death. Anyways, here was my response:

Ellimist,

For the settlers: once they reach Eodd, send the first one five tiles to the east, and settle north of the corn tile.

The second should go south to settle on the coastal plains hill, one tile south of the desert mana node. Both paths will be well-roaded.

As for our worldspell: it is a gift from Cernunnos to our people, and we do not take its use lightly. It is hard to imagine any victory that would be worth the cost that would be inflicted upon our people, who have grown dependent on our lush forests.

The fate of our empire would need to hang in the balance.

As for your suggestion of military action against the Malakim: this seems premature, unless they have decided to take the side of the Hippus and their angels. You have said that they are supportive of your campaign, so for the moment we would prefer to treat them as faithful allies. Let us take up your proposal after the present war has played itself out, and the dust has settled.

Have you received an answer from the Khazad?

HK, Advisor to the Queen

Got no response this turn. I'd like to know what's going on. If the plan isn't going through, I want to turn tech back on ASAP.

Speaking of which, how do you feel about changing the next tech to writing, Commodore? It's a prereq for several directions we might want to head:
the Esus route mentioned earlier, the national epic (which we'll surely need if we want to get serious about great prophet generation), and eventually taxation. And the sooner we get a library in Evermore, the more benefit we'll get from it. Still, it does take a while to pay for itself.

Finally, let's have a look at the demos:



Our GNP is not so hot (it'd look a little better if we weren't running 0% science, but we're still well below the three frontrunners). Everything else looks pretty good, though. We've got the highest production in the world (that's been us for several turns). This turn we overtook Ellimist in soldier count (we're #2 behind Basium, who gets some absurd bonus from the Mercurian palace). Though I hope we'll fall behind again on turn 88, if all goes according to plan.