[SPOILERS] PB1- Mardoc buys a can of paint for Thoth and Ellimist

[Mardoc]

Youtube videos and our forest of inside-jokes on signs? On T50, no less!

Here's how you do a proper report, Thoth The lurkers deserve it.

In foreign news and deductions, there's actually not that much. You lurkers heard about the discovery of Team Reddit, and subsequent eating of our expeditionary force. Although at least it appears that our gift of XP to their spider paid off. And Kyan/plako/DaveV have been consistently the ones to beat; they've fired off Gifts of Nantosuelta already, at a time when the Luch had the world's highest population. We believe that to have been a size 8, 4, 2, and 1 city, which could only have happened if both the Balseraphs and Illians gifted them their first settlers. The four Hammers have definitely paid them dividends; they've been leading the demos quite convincingly, especially MFG, and have their first Great Engineer already. And the Luch seem to have popped Gems in their culture, as well, as if they didn't have enough going for them already.

But enough about the eventual losers of this game . Let's talk about our team!

To start with, our tech path. Has been fairly standard so far, actually, except our first tech: we started with Exploration and Ancient Chants.
Immediately went for Mysticism, which seems to be paying off. Or at least didn't slow us much, God King and the early Academy paying for the diversion.

Then Agriculture, Calendar, to get some food. Then Crafting, Mining, Masonry, to get hammers boosted up again.

We're currently taking a gamble, and trying for Way of the Earthmother; we'd probably want it anyway for the Clan, but it pays much more quickly if we can also get the holy city and shrine. Plus, we have the vital worker techs in place, so we can proceed with economic expansion unhindered.

Mostly unhindered, that is. Mysticism first meant that our workers started behind, and just about the time we were starting to catch up, this annoyance showed up:


Since we have no military tech at this time, and want to limit our investment in warriors, we've had a number of wasted worker turns running from the barbs. A couple lost warriors and improvements as well. At this point, we're starting to get them under control; we've gotten some XP onto our warriors . That makes everything easier. As does the road network and the increasing number of soldiers, of course.

What have we accomplished so far? Well, the orcs are best developed, of course. Calabim would be equal, except we had a settler eaten, despite his guard, one tile from our borders by a griffon. We've been more careful since, which of course meant that we were also lucky when we didn't need to be; the Elohim killed our local spider, for example.

So, the orcs. First up, our capital, Newcastle Brown Ale. As you can see, we've gotten it entirely onto improved tiles, and are working on a few bonus tiles to allow other cities to steal the current tiles, and for when we grow. It's quite the hammer heavy city at this point, which goes very well with our first Warrens build. As did a few chopped forests, and God King. In just a couple turns, we'll have our Warrens and then we'll really be cooking with gas!


Our second city, Keith's IPA, is also coming along nicely, although not quite as impressive as the capital, of course. We've recently had to retake the improved tiles for NBA, but a few more worker turns should put KIPA back onto all improved tiles as well. We haven't had the leisure to work on our second warrens just yet, what with all the barbs, but when NBA starts really spamming units, we should have our chance. It helps that we've started KIPA working a Priest, to eventually become Tablets of Bambur; he's currently due in 31 turns, although we ought to be able to speed that up once we get a Temple to Kilmorph in here and work a second priest.



Finally, the orcs have just one more city to show off at this point. Old Speckled Hen was founded largely to provide a connection to the Calabim. Both a trade connection, via the river, and a road connection, so that we can share units back and forth. Well - and for the copper. It's hurting even more for improved tiles to work, but again we ought to catch up soonish, now that we can fight the barbs in the open with odds.



The orcs are on the verge of a great explosion of happiness and settlement, as we're about to have Expansive Warrens online, and sufficient control of the countryside to use them properly.

While the orcs have been flexing their muscles, developing hammer cities for our upcoming growth phase, the Calabim have been working on their stomachs.

The capital, Riesling, has gotten itself a truly vast food surplus. Which has primarily been applied toward settlers and workers, with the occasional Bloodpet thrown in for good measure.


Our first attempt at Chardonnay was eaten by a griffon, but our second attempt worked. This site was chosen almost purely for its location; sharing tiles with the capital to save worker turns, and bringing our culture to orcish borders to enable trade. The wines imported into the Calabim empire as a result have already paid dividends. At the moment Chardonnay has entirely improved tiles to work, but that will be changing swiftly, given its lovely food surplus.



We've covered the strong arm, and the greedy stomach of our team; let's conclude with the brain.

The Elohim have had the world's greatest GNP for quite a while now, surpassing even the Luchiurp and Illians. This is mostly the result of our early Mysticism, I'm sure, which enabled a super early Academy.

The capital city of Tequila still has room to improve on that front, as we haven't yet managed to have both workers and barb control simultaneously enough to finish our silk plantation or our gold mine. Sometime soon, we expect to have that sorted. We only need maybe 8 more worker turns to get the pair of those improved, after all, plus a little time to grow into the new happy cap. Given its natural potential, we've of course planned our first Dereptus for installation here. It's been a little delayed as we try to get the barbs under control in this hilly and forest heavy terrain. On the other hand, Charismatic has been quite helpful there, we've already trained up some good warriors for that duty.


Tequila did manage to produce a settler and enough workers to establish a second city of its own, Whiskey. Which has been handicapped by barbs, but again should shortly be much better. The installation of a Reliquary will enable this to be a massive military pump, with Charismatic Spirit Guide warriors and scouts to gain control of the surroundings. And the culture will be handy, too .


In summary - we've been doing all right so far; not leading the game, but not too far behind, either. We didn't expect to lead, not given the better starting techs, lack of Barbarian trait, and Gifts-possessing Luchiurp team. But, we're about to start accelerating so fast I just hope I can hang on. NBA will be capable of 4 settlers every 7 turns at its current state, if the rest of our empire could support that pace with garrisons and workers. And cash. In practice, we'll have to settle for a slower rate, at least at first, as NBA will have to provide some of that support itself. Seeing as it will probably be outproducing the rest of everything, combined

Current plan is for the orcs to get most of this early wave. As Barbarians, they're best placed to pay the maintenance, and besides, we want the early warrens as well. Once we have the ability to build Governor's Manors, the Calabim will want a number of settlers, but not really until. And the Elohim are probably always going to be smallest; although they could benefit from some Warrens as well, we need to be careful not to smother our science rate.

So, lurkers...did I miss anything important?

[Mardoc]

Played the turn. Mostly bad news this turn - lost a warrior at 80% odds, the griffon showed up where we wanted to move a worker outside borders, so that was aborted. And this:


I see no reason not to finish WotE, even if it won't pay quite as well as we'd been planning on. On the bright side, that's 60 hammers down for Team plako, and time/XP lost on boosting golems, too.

In other news, I'm sending a bloodpet to help out the Elohim, along with the workers already en route.

And workers pretty much just followed the signs. Preparing for the three settlers finished at EOT :D

[Mardoc]

Ellimist Thought you said you'd get the turn played last night .

I played the turn real quick this morning, trying to fit it in 4 minutes. I suspect there's some worker going on as a result. I also think I missed telling the Elohim to work the gold after the barb was cleared off. So next turn we'll need to be extra observant. Still, at least the workers did something this turn.

[Ellimist]

Ah, dammit, I forgot.

Sorry.

[Mardoc]

Ah, dammit, I forgot.

Sorry.

We'll win anyway

[Ichabod]

Everything alright, guys? What about Thoth? Haven't seen him around here lately.

[Mardoc]

Everything alright, guys? What about Thoth? Haven't seen him around here lately.

We're fine. Just hit a busy stretch for all of us at the same time, pretty much. For a while I was covering the turns by myself; Ellimist has found a little more time in his schedule recently (although I do still look forward to XX finishing one way or the other). As for Thoth - he's been gone from RB, but he did send us an e-mail saying

My apologies for being AWOL the last couple of weeks without notice. I've been having a rough September.

I'm hoping to be back in the loop by the weekend.

His hope didn't quite seem to manifest, but I'm sure he's still alive and sane and will rejoin us as soon as he gets those RL things under control. Obviously we told him to take all the time he needs.

But in any event, reporting this game definitely got the lowest priority for us. May be a while before that changes, too .

[Ellimist]

I'll make sure I do a full update in a few days.

Things are really starting take off for us. We're past the essential phases of setting up the Clan REX, and aristocracy is online for the Clan and Calabim. So now we need the rest of the economic techs and we'll get the snowball moving faster and faster.

[Ellimist]

Sorry for going so long without any updates. Here's an overview of what's going on for Team Alcohol.

[SIZE="6"]Elohim:[/SIZE]

So far, we've used very different strategies for our various component civs. The Elohim have provided most of our beakers so far, and have mostly avoided horizontal expansion. This has allowed them to maintain a very high slider, which works very well with our academy at Tequila. This enabled us to over-expand with the Calabim and Clan to the point where they could hardly produce beakers at all. They were able to mostly recover when Aristocracy became available, but they never would have gotten to it without the Elohim.

Our current objective for the short term is building Form of the Titan. Hero the warrior unlocked it a bit back thanks to the Charismatic trait, and we actually started working on it before copper was available. The Elohim were already in Godking, and we had noticed that Team Luchuirp already had copper:



There's no way to tell if they already have a qualifying unit, but they're a strong contender for the wonder if they do. Even without copper, they have all those great engineers, and the Luchuirp are still running pacifism.




You can see here what I meant about vertical expansion. This city has devoted a lot of hammers into buildings, and 100% science costs only 9 gpt.

Bronze working is expected to come in next turn after the Elohim and Clan have played, and FotT is on track to complete on turn 79.

Titan hammers:
Turn 74: +27 78/335
Turn 75: +27 105/335
T76: Copper is added, a mine is completed for +1 hammer, and two forests are chopped.
Turn 76(2 chops): +40 145/335
Turn 76: +47 192/335
Turn 77: +47 239/335
Turn 78(1 chop): +20 259/335
Turn 78: +47 306/335
Turn 79: +47 353/335




Whiskey is currently building a settler for our third Elohim(native) city, as well as taking advantage of pacifism to work on our next Elohim great person. Once the wonder finishes, we're planning on switching the Elohim into a aristocracy and apprenticeship, and producing a lot of 4 exp units that start with two promotions and spirit guide. Once Animal Husbandry is in(after Bronze), this will help fuel our exploration with subdue animal scouts.

In addition, I want to settle one or two tolerated orc cities for the Elohim at locations that have a lot of hammers. Warrens should work very well with the charismatic trait, especially for shamans.

[Ellimist]

[SIZE="6"]Clan of Embers:[/SIZE]

The Clan has been the focus of most of our expansion so far. We wanted to get warrens going early in several cities, and to leverage those into rapid expansion across multiple civs. That's basically where we are right now. We currently have warrens in three cities, and we're exporting settlers and missionaries to the Calabim.




Here's the Clan capital of Newcastle Brown Ale. This city is the primary engine of unit production for the team, and that's not likely to change for awhile. One thing to note is that the Clan are only using luxury and health resources that we have at least three copies of, so we're exporting the EXP health bonus along with the happiness from our cheap SPI temples.




Until now, Keith's IPA has mostly been taking advantage of some premium tiles that NBA was unable to work. This has worked out well, but now that the borders are expanded, we're ready for aristofarms on the riverside tiles northeast of the city. We can also start building the Clan's National Epic, and it will probably go here.




Our border city of Old Speckled Hen is our major livestock exporter to the Calabim. You can also see how the city pays for its own maintenance with a temple and merchant specialist.




SSD will be a pretty strong city someday, but it's a bit short on food until we research construction. Either way, it already produces enough commerce to be worthwhile and settlers are cheap.







Here are the twin river cities of Budweiser and Coors. They're still focusing on food and getting set up right now.