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

[Mardoc]

Mardoc: I logged into the game as the Calabim to check on FotT.

And?

You're killing me here :@ Is it taken or not? This is the turn it completes, IIRC, assuming it's not already taken.

[Thoth]

Yeah, we've got it at the end of the Elohim turn.

[Thoth]

Went ahead and played t82 after chatting with Mardoc.

Killed a bunch of barbs with the Elohim (99+% odds mostly....plus one 76% fight that would have cost us a worker turn either way..won them all)

And made a decision that I really shouldn't have in a team game.

I changed our research from Construction to Horseback Riding.


It's a damn shitty thing to do in a team game and I'm an asshole for doing it.

But....


Construction doesn't get us any more military capability without a hammer investment.


HBR gets us access to Mob 1 as a promo plus Warrens built Wolfriders.

And I really, really, really, don't like the fact that the Lurichip have twice the power of our best civ. The Orcs. Who have a bunch of apparent power tied up in Thanes and SoKs for Hippie builds.

We need more boots on the ground yesterday.


I also went ahead and promoted the 6xp warrior in Tequilla to G1/C1. It's the only freaking thing holding our Academy/Brewery city. I'd really rather not lose it to an opportunistic attack out of the fog. (and I wouldn't mind another defender or two here either, this city is rather important to us right now)

[Ellimist]

It's okay. I don't think we had any beakers invested in construction anyway.

But we do need chain irrigation pretty badly.

[Mardoc]

It's okay. I don't think we had any beakers invested in construction anyway.

Which is partly because I was in favor of HBR myself...

I think Construction afterward does make sense, though. Not sure what we should follow it with - maybe Writing? Need to look at tech costs, Sanitation is also quite tempting. Or we could go up toward Priesthood.

Part of our boots on the ground problem was a desire to delay training them until Titan was built. The other part is most likely complacency, though .

One of the things that Thoth mentioned last night, which is totally true: at the moment we're basically playing each turn in itself, we don't really have an overall plan, other than 'eventually it'd be nice to have big empires and vampires and Ogres'. We don't even really have a short term plan, let alone something that'll take us to victory. Really, it's nobody's fault (or else it's all of our fault), we just haven't been putting in any more than minimum time recently.

Since we're having trouble coordinating all three of us playing together - and even rarely 2 of us, why don't we resurrect this thread? We can do our planning here, where I can post something and you can weigh in 10 hours later, instead of trying to match our schedules. I ought to be able to find a bit more time for planning than I have in the past month or so.

I'd feel more confident grabbing the turn if we've got a solid plan in place to follow, too .

First thought for consideration: since we're going HBR now (apparently ), let's plan to get some value from it immediately. I'd really like about 5-6 wolfriders scouting our immediate surroundings so we can make a proper dotmap. And to be a sentry net, as well. I'd also like to meet at least the Kurios; Thoth made a good point that we should delay meeting Team Reddit until one of us swaps religions, or until we can afford the 'fighting brothers of the faith' unhappy. Kurio meeting will probably require 2-3 more wolves. Finally, I do like the idea of at least keeping eyes on Team Golem, maybe even bringing in enough for serious harassment. Although, if we go that route, I really need one or both of you to be around every turn, I don't trust my tactical mind. Or else to accept that we're losing them sooner or later . Call that another 5-6 to start with.

So all in all - we could easily use 15-20 wolfriders, just to do the absolute basics of getting us info and forcing people to cover their workers. Let's plan to knock those out pronto after getting HBR, please. We should have at least four Warrens cities by then, it really wouldn't take long. Could have those guys trained before Construction comes in, most likely, without having to skip training settlers.

Second thought: I think we're overdoing it a bit on the Thanes, at least inside Clan lands. We still want to get it spread to the Elohim pronto, but after that, let's slow down our Thane construction a bit. Not every city must have Kilmorph spread immediately, and some can ignore border pops for a while too. Now that we've gotten into Aristo, we're not nearly as close to the economic cliff as we were. Not saying we should stop building Thanes, just push them back a bit - build a border popper only for cities with good stuff in their second ring, delay spreading Kilmorph til a city is approaching its happy cap, that sort of thing. 20 hammers for 1 gpt isn't the best deal; the 2 happiness is the real value. But that means spreads can wait until we need the happy.

Why do I mention this? Well, it's been a long time since our awesome settler pump of a capital has actually built a settler. And as Thoth mentions, our military is stagnating too. I think that's because we've been building essentially only Warrens and Thanes. Shouldn't slow the Warrens, but we can afford to slow our Kilmorph use.

Finally, we should plan something for our Great Prophet - and make some sort of great person strategy in general, for that matter. I don't really have any great ideas, other than 'travel back in time, don't get eaten by a spider, and get the Kilmorph holy city ourselves therefore'

Any short/medium term plan suggestions either of you would like to add? I'll pop in occasionally during the day, and then hopefully tonight I can spend some time browsing the game and can propose a mid-term tech path if you haven't beat me to it.

[Ellimist]

(spoilered for length)

One of the things that Thoth mentioned last night, which is totally true: at the moment we're basically playing each turn in itself, we don't really have an overall plan, other than 'eventually it'd be nice to have big empires and vampires and Ogres'. We don't even really have a short term plan, let alone something that'll take us to victory. Really, it's nobody's fault (or else it's all of our fault), we just haven't been putting in any more than minimum time recently.

Since we're having trouble coordinating all three of us playing together - and even rarely 2 of us, why don't we resurrect this thread? We can do our planning here, where I can post something and you can weigh in 10 hours later, instead of trying to match our schedules. I ought to be able to find a bit more time for planning than I have in the past month or so.

I'd feel more confident grabbing the turn if we've got a solid plan in place to follow, too.

Agreed.

Part of this is the fact that we're at a transitionary phase, but we ought to define our goals a bit better if we want to achieve them.

I'll try to be available at a convenient time for you two as well, and put any plans down in the thread.

I think Construction afterward does make sense, though.  Not sure what we should follow it with - maybe Writing?  Need to look at tech costs, Sanitation is also quite tempting.  Or we could go up toward Priesthood.

If we get HBR, then writing-trade becomes very tempting. Construction and Sanitation will take our aristofarm strategy to the next level though.

The reason for construction before HBR, though, is that construction immediately helps us in a major way and HBR doesn't. Our expansion right now is limited by irrigation more than anything else.

Part of our boots on the ground problem was a desire to delay training them until Titan was built. The other part is most likely complacency, though

If we're attacked by team 2 or 4, we're probably going to see fast mounted units, but an army from team 3 would be much slower, at least until Keelyn starts to shine. 

Wolf riders are a niche unit... They handle certain situations very well, but they aren't all-purpose. If plako sends wood golems, we'll need a HUGE numbers advantage to defeat them with wolf riders. If we're looking for defense we ought to be building axes(which is why we need training yards.)

If we want our defenders to be more mobile, let's get haste shamans and the ability to cross rivers with roads(construction.) I know Mobility is a very useful promotion, but the trade off is unit strength, and that's the last thing we can afford to give up vs a Luchiurp army.

Second thought: I think we're overdoing it a bit on the Thanes, at least inside Clan lands. We still want to get it spread to the Elohim pronto, but after that, let's slow down our Thane construction a bit. Not every city must have Kilmorph spread immediately, and some can ignore border pops for a while too. Now that we've gotten into Aristo, we're not nearly as close to the economic cliff as we were. Not saying we should stop building Thanes, just push them back a bit - build a border popper only for cities with good stuff in their second ring, delay spreading Kilmorph til a city is approaching its happy cap, that sort of thing. 20 hammers for 1 gpt isn't the best deal; the 2 happiness is the real value. But that means spreads can wait until we need the happy.

Border pops also improve visibility/defense. RoK in Clan cities is needed if we want to build a cheap SPI temple there, which we usually do. Granted, a thane can wait until we want a temple or need the happiness, but we're going to want a temple of kilmorph in most of our Orc cities.

Why do I mention this? Well, it's been a long time since our awesome settler pump of a capital has actually built a settler. And as Thoth mentions, our military is stagnating too. I think that's because we've been building essentially only Warrens and Thanes. Shouldn't slow the Warrens, but we can afford to slow our Kilmorph use.

I agree, but not really for the reasons you say. We don't need any more thanes for our existing orc cities, though, and we should focus our expansion to the other two civs anyway. Now that we have our resource technologies(AH, Fishing), we're limited primarily by irrigation, but also by scouting(Elohim) and culture(Calabim).

[Ellimist]

First thought for consideration: since we're going HBR now (apparently ), let's plan to get some value from it immediately.  I'd really like about 5-6 wolfriders scouting our immediate surroundings so we can make a proper dotmap.  And to be a sentry net, as well.  I'd also like to meet at least the Kurios; Thoth made a good point that we should delay meeting Team Reddit until one of us swaps religions, or until we can afford the 'fighting brothers of the faith' unhappy.  Kurio meeting will probably require 2-3 more wolves.

Yeah, let's definitely get some more explorers and sentries out.

Finally, I do like the idea of at least keeping eyes on Team Golem, maybe even bringing in enough for serious harassment.  Although, if we go that route, I really need one or both of you to be around every turn, I don't trust my tactical mind.  Or else to accept that we're losing them sooner or later .  Call that another 5-6 to start with.

So all in all - we could easily use 15-20 wolfriders, just to do the absolute basics of getting us info and forcing people to cover their workers.  Let's plan to knock those out pronto after getting HBR, please.  We should have at least four Warrens cities by then, it really wouldn't take long.  Could have those guys trained before Construction comes in, most likely, without having to skip training settlers.

If wolf riders are still 40 (base) hammers in EitB, then NBA(alone) could build 15 of them in about 13 turns. That's probably affordable, but the bigger cost will be war weariness if we lose a lot of them over there. I'm not opposed to the idea, but I would prefer if we had a more ambitious goal.

What about something like this?

• We attempt to scout team 3's borders without tipping them off that we are. We can use HN animals, or else keep our units far enough back that they aren't seen.
• We strike at the western edge of the Balseraph territory with fast units and commando moroi. They will probably have priests of winter and skeletons by the time we arrive, but a force large enogh to be threatening should be able to punch past or avoid whatever is close enough to be relevant.
• We pillage and strike at targets of opportunity, but try to focus on preserving our units and maintaining a harassment force.
• After some turns of this, we attack the Luchiurp with a mixed force, with the goal of razing their capital. Hopefully the bulk of the Luchiurp defenders will have moved toward the Balseraph invaders.
• At that point we'll probably have identified additional objectives and targets.

Another thing to keep in mind is that we may be able to benefit from the drawback of "burning blood" if we use a lot of Moroi over there, because we won't suffer war weariness from any moroi that turn barbarian.

Finally, we should plan something for our Great Prophet - and make some sort of great person strategy in general, for that matter.  I don't really have any great ideas, other than 'travel back in time, don't get eaten by a spider, and get the Kilmorph holy city ourselves therefore.

As we don't have any near-term plans for another holy city, the most valuable use for him is probably a golden age. I'm not sure if we want to do a GA before currency though.

Any short/medium term plan suggestions either of you would like to add?  I'll pop in occasionally during the day, and then hopefully tonight I can spend some time browsing the game and can propose a mid-term tech path if you haven't beat me to it.

• Short term: Keep on expanding and exploring. Build essential infrastructure(warrens and manors) in existing cities.
• Mid term: Put pressure on our opponents and take care of our midgame techs(currency/feudalism/fanaticism/etc)
• Then: Set ourselves up to get three towers of divination in a short period of time and slingshot some game-winning advantage such as mithril. Preferably we do this before someone else does.

[Mardoc]

Much about Construction

I don't think anyone's arguing that Construction is a bad tech . It's just a question of priorities - Construction is good for econ now, and better for military eventually, once we spend the hammers. HBR is good for military now, and as a prereq for tech later, and that's about all.

We can still focus our settlements on places that don't need Construction farms; pretty much only SSD of our current cities is an exception. Construction isn't really that far away, even with HBR slipped in ahead of it.

It's just that it feels like we're hanging in the breeze at the moment. Axes, even with Construction, can't stop a chariot force, or a Warcry. They can't scout nearly as well, either.

Border pops also improve visibility/defense. RoK in Clan cities is needed if we want to build a cheap SPI temple there, which we usually do. Granted, a thane can wait until we want a temple or need the happiness, but we're going to want a temple of kilmorph in most of our Orc cities.

Yeah, I'm not arguing that Kilmorph is bad, just that I think we're being slightly inefficient by aiming to have it spread on a city's founding turn, or to pop absolutely every city's borders immediately. We should instead wait for it to be size 4-5, when it's in need of happiness or a non-Warrens useful build. When we were focused on spreading it to our mature cities, it was absolutely worth the priority, but now we should slow up a tad.

Similarly, yes, cultural borders help, but we can get simiar warning by having a wolf rider out in the fog; we might end up with some sort of cultural source eventually too so we can get third rings.

Just saying we shouldn't take it as a default that every city gets two thanes coming along with the settler, instead we should do them on a case-by-case basis.

I'm not opposed to the idea, but I would prefer if we had a more ambitious goal.

What about something like this?
We attempt to scout team 3's borders without tipping them off that we are. We can use HN animals, or else keep our units far enough back that they aren't seen.
We strike at the western edge of the Balseraph territory with fast units and commando moroi. They will probably have priests of winter and skeletons by the time we arrive, but a force large enogh to be threatening should be able to punch past or avoid whatever is close enough to be relevant.
We pillage and strike at targets of opportunity, but try to focus on preserving our units and maintaining a harassment force.
After some turns of this, we attack the Luchiurp with a mixed force, with the goal of razing their capital. Hopefully the bulk of the Luchiurp defenders will have moved toward the Balseraph invaders.
At that point we'll probably have identified additional objectives and targets.
Another thing to keep in mind is that we may be able to benefit from the drawback of "burning blood" if we use a lot of Moroi over there, because we won't suffer war weariness from any moroi that turn barbarian.

I don't think we can do this anytime soon. Among other things, we need at least Mobility promotion on the Moroi, ideally also shamans. Also I'd want the fast units to be chariots, I think, not wolf riders, if we intend to actually take cities. So you're talking starting preparations after we get HBR, Construction, Hunting, KotE.

This sounds like an excursion of at least 40-50 units, to be able to decoy and strike simultaneously, and it only works if they don't have any scouts, Hawks, or Floating Eyes. They have our graphs, and minimum travel time is something like 8 turns, even with shamans and Mobility-promoted Moroi. I bet they can probably 1-turn wood golems in their capital, too, it's ~size 10 with four settled Golden Hammers, right? And do you really think plako would leave a prize like that lightly guarded?

I'm also nervous about the idea of using a split force in the face of summons. I don't want to give them a chance to whittle us down piecemeal for free.

That's really a huge investment. And it would likely only work if the force arrives while they're still relying on Priests of Winter/Wood Golems; if they make it to Gargoyles or Mages, there's no hope. I'd be much happier aiming for continuous pressure and a vampire knockout blow, than for a knockout with axes on a map this big. In the short term, we can benefit from exchanging 20 hammer wolfriders for...pretty much anything, if we go one for one. Certainly I'd be happy to trade a wolf for a mud golem. Heck, we can even trade 7-8 wolf riders for a city and garrison and come out ahead!

That said, I'm ok with starting on the harassment right away, and if that goes well, you might talk me into more later. We can't realistically build that knockout force for 20 turns or so anyway, given the supporting units we'll need. And we can and should build some Moroi for self-defense regardless; if the situation's right, I'm happy to do our self-defense preemptively. I'm just not ready to commit to a full blown invasion at this tech level.

Short term: Keep on expanding and exploring. Build essential infrastructure(warrens and manors) in existing cities.
Mid term: Put pressure on our opponents and take care of our midgame techs(currency/feudalism/fanaticism/etc)

Hard to argue with this . It's so high-level. I'm willing to argue with you about details, though .

Ah, come to think, there's another detail to consider. So far, we're only discussing harassment on Team 3. Now, granted, they need suppression the most, but we shouldn't neglect making Team 4 and even Team 2 build military.

Then: Set ourselves up to get three towers of divination in a short period of time and slingshot some game-winning advantage such as mithril. Preferably we do this before someone else does.

Mithril is not a game-winning advantage. Pure strength, without collateral or summons, is how Team Centaur lost PBEM 21. We need some strong units, but I nominate Iron Ogres and Paladins/Eidolons for the role. Mithril's also probably not worth a Tower - 536 hammers is a lot. I could maybe see a case for getting Feudalism/Fanaticism this way, though. Or the Druids tech. Or Vampire Lords. Or maybe even up to Archmagi, depending on how well our shamans shape up.

[Thoth]

It's okay. I don't think we had any beakers invested in construction anyway.

But we do need chain irrigation pretty badly.

Construction next for sure. But waiting another 3turns for chain irrigation/bridges won't cost us the game. Delaying HBR might. I agree that Wolfriders aren't great as combat units. But they're cheap, fast throwaway units we can get to trouble spots in a hurry. They also make great scouts (Mob 1 Wolfrider paired with a Mob 2 Elohim Scout makes for a solid, cheap scouting party.) and en masse can make very good raiders.

HBR is also a mild economic tech: We pay 1gpt in maintenance on our SoKs while they are enroute to their destination city. Mob 1 halves the gold cost of Sok rushing. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but every little bit helps.

I think Construction afterward does make sense, though.  Not sure what we should follow it with - maybe Writing?  Need to look at tech costs, Sanitation is also quite tempting.  Or we could go up toward Priesthood.

If we get HBR, then writing-trade becomes very tempting. Construction and Sanitation will take our aristofarm strategy to the next level though.

I like Construction/Sanitation after HBR. That gets us Bridges, chain irrigation and boosted farms without having to spend a single hammer. A Bathhouse in the Calabim capital would be a worthwhile way to spend 100h, but I doubt we'll be spamming them. (yet)

Writing/Trade after that gets us Libs (cheap for the Elohim and the Vamps have lots of hammers post GMs) and the Under/Overcouncil civics plus possible councils. Overcouncil is the better civic, but has absolute junk for resolutions. The one good resolution (+1 trade routes in all cities) applies to *everyone* in the game. Undercouncil is slightly weaker overall as a civic but has great resolutions (the GS from Secret Codes is about the only way we're going to get a GP for the Calabim. A GA to build up a flock of Vamps once Fued is in would be rather nice. ).

Other option post San would be to head to KotE (very, very useful to us as we have some great buff spells unlocked with our Palace manas) and then to AV (using the Orc GP to part bulb CoS). That gets us AV without having to pay a happy penalty for it. Note that the "WWFWOBSITF" unhappy face will only go away if we capture/burn the Holy city.


Hrm...just occurs to me that we could also take a run at Mil Strat. We'd need Philo first (but we need that for AV anyway) and we're likely to lose the GC as team 3 already has Philo and Warfare. But that gets us access to Calabim Command Posts. the xp will be handy pre- Vamps and the 20% hammer boost to military is always handy. Plus there is the outside chance at the GC if team 3 doesn't go there.

Writing/Trade is the stronger eco path (though AV temples at 2bpt each are an ok substitute) but I think KotE and AV first is the stronger play here.

The reason for construction before HBR, though, is that construction immediately helps us in a major way and HBR doesn't. Our expansion right now is limited by irrigation more than anything else.

I saw it the other way around: HBR helps us now (Promo + units immediately buildable) vs delayed help from Construction (need Siege workshops and HBR for Chariots). HBR first lets us get rolling on some WRs right now while we tech to Construction. Some Wolf riders to act as scouts/pickets/mobile defenses will assist our upcoming Axemen (KIPA has finished it's TY and has 3 queued) and Moroi (second Calabim city has finished TY and has some Moroi queued). I'll be a lot happier about our military once we have some heavies (Axes/Moroi) for local defense plus some Wolfriders for zone defense. Plus scouting parties and pickets.

Construction's effect is delayed: Chain irrigation helps our growth in a couple of cities but that won't impact our war readiness for some turns to come (and in the case of Straub delays Rantine as we would have to work a farm rather than a mine in order to reap the benefit of chain irrigation in this city).

Part of our boots on the ground problem was a desire to delay training them until Titan was built. The other part is most likely complacency, though

We're probably ok, but we cannot afford to ignore military.

Once we have a few more fresh warriors in Elohim lands, I'd like to march our two highly promoted Elohim warriors down to Calabim lands so we can equip them with either sword or better yet chariots (Reisling can build a SW quite quickly after the Temple of Kill'emorph is done...slightly delayed (about 1 1/2 turns) if we go with a Thane for the border pop in Pinot. I like the Thane first as it's the absolute fastest way to pop Pinot's borders and those Gems are worth two happy with a ToK. (plus I've heard that them high commerce tiles are nice to work ) The SW would also let us build Chariots directly in our nice high hammer (and growing) Raider capital. And I think we can come up with a use for Raider Chariots somehow or another.

If we're attacked by team 2 or 4, we're probably going to see fast mounted units, but an army from team 3 would be much slower, at least until Keelyn starts to shine. 

Maybe. But that depends on team 3 falling into the Golem trap. If they spend those hammers on chariots instead, they can move up to 5 tiles per turn.

[/quote]
Wolf riders are a niche unit... They handle certain situations very well, but they aren't all-purpose. If plako sends wood golems, we'll need a HUGE numbers advantage to defeat them with wolf riders. If we're looking for defense we ought to be building axes(which is why we need training yards.)[/quote]

I hope he sends WGs. With a decent sentry net we should be able to spot his incoming stack in time to prepare a nice warm hilltop welcoming party. If he sends Mob 2 mounted then our reaction time becomes almost nil. And Mob 1 Catapults are perfect for dealing with 1 move stacks. :D

If we want our defenders to be more mobile, let's get haste shamans and the ability to cross rivers with roads(construction.) I know Mobility is a very useful promotion, but the trade off is unit strength, and that's the last thing we can afford to give up vs a Luchiurp army.

If they make the mistake of coming at us with slow movers then unit strength will matter a lot less if we have some mob1 cats to soften him up. If he comes at us with fast movers we'll need the speed to get our forces into postition.

Second thought: I think we're overdoing it a bit on the Thanes, at least inside Clan lands. We still want to get it spread to the Elohim pronto, but after that, let's slow down our Thane construction a bit. Not every city must have Kilmorph spread immediately, and some can ignore border pops for a while too. Now that we've gotten into Aristo, we're not nearly as close to the economic cliff as we were. Not saying we should stop building Thanes, just push them back a bit - build a border popper only for cities with good stuff in their second ring, delay spreading Kilmorph til a city is approaching its happy cap, that sort of thing. 20 hammers for 1 gpt isn't the best deal; the 2 happiness is the real value. But that means spreads can wait until we need the happy.

Border pops also improve visibility/defense. RoK in Clan cities is needed if we want to build a cheap SPI temple there, which we usually do. Granted, a thane can wait until we want a temple or need the happiness, but we're going to want a temple of kilmorph in most of our Orc cities.[/quote]

I disagree with this for the most part. 40h for +1 gpt in a new city + a border pop is an awesome hammer exchange. OSH and Coors can both push out 5t settler pairs (both have 2 queued after current worker/warrior builds). That's 8 settlers in the next 15 turns (assuming we keep KIPA on Axe duty and put our awesome UNIT pump Orc capital to work on some Wolfriders. Not including any contribution from Budweiser (which will be awhile yet, it still has to grow into the two Cotton tiles before it starts working a mine at size 8. Size 9 we can work 2 gh mines, 1 ph mine, 2x cotton and 4x riverside farms for 11h/+2 food pre San. Good enough for 4t workers or 6t settlers.

With that rate of expansion we'll want every scrap of gold we can lay our grubby mitts on. Also, Spi ToKs are a very good use of a new city's native hammers and excellent recipients of chops. Warrens can be built with 4x mob 1 SoKs (built with a discount under Mil State once we have something approximating a real army.)

Why do I mention this? Well, it's been a long time since our awesome settler pump of a capital has actually built a settler.

That's in part because the Orcs have grown to the point where our awesome hammer Orc capital can do what it was meant to do: Build us an army worthy of Mordor. Once that sucker completes it's upcoming growth it steals the PH mine back from KIPA and produces 20 base hammers per turn for the rest of the game. It'll grow a bit once San is in and we have some more luxes, but 20 hpt is good enough for a solid HE city.

OSH and Coors can keep the settler stream going fast enough for the moment. We'll outstrip our ability to defend/improve new cities if we build too many settlers too fast. With the upcoming worker builds we'll be ok for workers for the short term (I'll see about getting some actual worker plans posted so we don't have anymore "Thoth moves two Orc workers West to start chopping/mining Budwieser, someone moves said workers East to idle where we already have 2 orc and 4 Calabim workers, Thoth moves workers back West again while muttering rude words" type nonsense.

[Thoth]

*SNIP*

Agree with the numbers Mardoc is suggesting. But we can have those numbers fairly quickly: NBA can build slightly better than 2 WRs every 2 turns and once KIPA finishes up 1/2 a dozen swords or two it can join in the fun.

Any short/medium term plan suggestions either of you would like to add?  I'll pop in occasionally during the day, and then hopefully tonight I can spend some time browsing the game and can propose a mid-term tech path if you haven't beat me to it.

• Short term: Keep on expanding and exploring. Build essential infrastructure(warrens and manors) in existing cities.

Agreed that expanding/scouting/picketing/and warrens/ToKs/GMs are all high priority.

But they are a means to an end, not an end of themselves.

Mid term: Put pressure on our opponents and take care of our midgame techs(currency/feudalism/fanaticism/etc)

Then: Set ourselves up to get three towers of divination in a short period of time and slingshot some game-winning advantage such as mithril. Preferably we do this before someone else does.

Game winning techs? Fued and IW should do the trick quite nicely without any Tower fancyness.

Seriously, just what exactly are we going to get that is better than Iron Vamps backed by Iron Chariots and Iron Ogres? (preferably with Ritaualist support, but in a pinch ie Arcane Lacuna that force mix still performs very very well in numbers)

Mithril? Hell, Yeah. But I'd rather spend beakers towards IW/Feud and hammers on Ogres, Chariots, Vamps, other war toys than beakers on Divination and hammers on a ToD before then.

Though if we can somehow get a GE (Events are pretty much our only shot here) ToD slinging Feud would be a solid hammer/beaker exchange. And we could be conventionally teching to IW while building the Tower for the Fued sling.

hmmm.......