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

[Mardoc]

evening is fine by me.

and it's always more fun playing the turns when all three of us are around.

Ready whenever you are. Might need to break while playing for little things, but we can start.

[Mardoc]

While we wait on Thoth to return, let's entertain the lurkers with a report!

I'm going to break this up into several posts, one for each civ, one for foreign info/deductions, and finally an overview.

First up, the Elohim. They are in a position that's great for a teamer, and would be horrible for a solo. We've deliberately traded growth for other things. These include the Titan, reliquaries and spirit guide troops, and most especially, raw commerce. They're #1 in the world for commerce, and of course the Titan is a very nice team wonder.

Most of that is the investment we've spent in growing Tequilla vertically. You can see that this is a gem of a city, outproducing entire other civs in GNP.


Dereptus, Academy, Elder Council, a whole passel of aristofarms and all the nice commerce resources add up to a heck of a lot of commerce. Our limited hammers are currently focused on knocking out Subdue Animal scouts with Spirit Guide. We figure owning the various griffons and (hopefully) spiders should be worth the trade, and those scouts who die will pass on their XP to units with higher base strength.

Our second Elohim city isn't nearly as nice, but it's still a very strong contributor. Whiskey's simply producing a lot of commerce and some more SA scouts. It's also got a lot of room for food surplus, and has been the source of most of our workers and a settler.



Finally, we've got our newest Elohim city, Gin. We've dumped in a lot of worker labor and a Soldier of Kilmorph to really jumpstart its growth. Its primary role is to grab our third copper, but it's a nice hammer city on top of that.



Future plans for the Elohim? There's a few sites we'd like to grab soon; unfortunately, the focus on vertical growth and the distance from the orcs has meant these sites are culturally dominated and will have to be built with Elohim settlers, for the most part. In the north, these sites weren't really viable until Animal Husbandry came in, and we'll really like to pick up Hunting for them too.


To the east, these sites are chosen more for defense, and will be pretty decent sites for Orc settlers:


Otherwise, the Elohim will simply continue cranking out the beakers and Spirit Guide disposable military units. We're hoping that soon they can be done with building settlers, and can have their land dominated by Tolerated cities instead. Another soonish priority is to build their Philosophical libraries (Writing is on our near-term tech list), and possibly to take a crack at the Great Library.

Sometime soon, we'll revolt them into Kilmorph for the bonus happy - and probably promptly export their unique resources to one or both of the other civs. Only three cities makes it hard to use resources efficiently.

Finally, Elohim demographics clearly show how they've been skewed for the team aspect of the game. First in GNP, pathetic in the other categories. Alone, they wouldn't have the production to benefit from their tech rate. Fortunately we've got the other two civs to do that for us.

[Mardoc]

Next up, the pre-Bloodsuckers.

Our Calabim are just now coming into their own, a few turns after we picked up Code of Laws.

First up, the capital. Riesling was originally pretty mediocre, just a big food surplus that we dumped into a million workers. Exported quite a few to the other two civs, in addition to working them ourselves. Now, however, with Aristocracy and Governor's Manor, it's also a hammer powerhouse and a fair few beakers as well. We've been backfilling some infrastructure, after which I'm not certain what its role will be. 22 hpt adds up to an awful lot, though, and that'll only improve as we keep growing it.

Thoth and Ellimist explained to me that with cities like this, there's never a reason to 'avoid growth' - already working all its hammer tiles, extra pop is extra production, and when we'd use the food surplus for something like a worker, unhappy pop stops eating. Plus of course bigger means more Feast XP, later on.

That said, we do intend to put in even more infrastructure. The Manor means that population pays very well.



Next, Calabim 2nd city, Chardonnay. Honestly, same boat as the capital; lots of farms means lots of food, but with aristofarms and a Manor, it's pretty darn awesome as more than a worker pump. Animal Husbandry giving us that horse was a handy bonus.


Pinot Grigio was pretty poor a dozen turns ago, with primarily the stolen banana to get it going. Now that we've gotten the jungle chopped mostly away, and researched Fishing, it's a much better city. 2 turns until the Manor completes for awesomeness; when a Thane comes and gives it culture, that'll help even more. Gems will go very well with all our Kilmorph action, and a workboat won't go amiss either.


Zinfindel's fairly new, and it's more of a hammer city anyway. Still, the crab will shortly allow us to work a whole lot of tiles, and it should be a nice source of Moroi to keep us secure in the short run.


Finally, the newest city, Champagne, is pretty middling. It was founded primarily for the rice, and because it was the next closest site unsettled. Of course, with a Manor, any site with food can be a nice Vampire city.



Most of our city sites were chosen with an eye to Manors, which meant they weren't much more than worker pumps up until the last couple turns. Now that we've got them, though...Vamps are getting to be a really hammer heavy civ.

Expansion prospects for the Vamps? Well, we don't see any reason whatsoever to expand them directly, they're a perfect candidate for orcish settlers. They'll grow as we have excess settlers built, and meanwhile knock out Moroi and infrastructure. We've only one site picked out for them, we really need more and better scouting before we can plan them much in advance.

This site is pretty strong, though, and should be founded and gifted this turn:


To sum up the vamps...we've spent the whole game working to get them Manors and big cities. We pretty well crashed their economy, but Aristocracy has turned them into a half-decent commerce civ too. Now that's mostly accomplished, they're going to get to be a lot of fun! Their demos reflect that, with massive food, and now darn good hammers on top:

[Thoth]

Sorry for not showing up guys. I fell asleep on the couch and didn't wake up until 3:00 am.

[Mardoc]

Sorry for not showing up guys. I fell asleep on the couch and didn't wake up until 3:00 am.

Clearly that means that any mistakes of mine are all your fault.

Or that you were so tired you wouldn't have been a whole lot of help anyway.

In any event, things worked out. I suspect you had a great deal of influence in the turn, anyway: for example, we followed the various worker signs well enough that we used them up, and I argued for a Moroi instead of a Granary in Chardonnay .

Maybe tonight I'll manage to finish the report. Or at least before Team 2 unpauses and it goes all the way around.

[Thoth]

and I argued for a Moroi instead of a Granary in Chardonnay .

So which did we build?

Maybe tonight I'll manage to finish the report. Or at least before Team 2 unpauses and it goes all the way around.

Too late....we're up again. :D

[Ellimist]

I'll be home very soon if you guys don't mind waiting a few more minutes for the current turn.

[Mardoc]

So which did we build?

Moroi. Or at least started one, don't think we quite had 30 hammers there.

Too late....we're up again. :D

Bah! Wait, what am I saying?

I'll be home very soon if you guys don't mind waiting a few more minutes for the current turn.

Cool, a few more minutes is a pretty good time for me, actually. I'll go ahead and log in now just to look.

[Mardoc]

So, it's a turn delayed, but here's what's going on in the land of the Clan. I put them til last cause they're our biggest and best civ

Unfortunately, I'm afraid we'll get yet another turn before I have time to properly report, so you'll just get a picture dump and some summary thoughts.











Basically, we chose the Clan for Expansive, and for Warrens, and we're putting pedal to the metal on both fronts. It's really starting to pay off, too.





Looking at the graphs and the demos, I think it's clear that we're now doing better than Team 3, on a flows basis: more food, hammers, and maybe commerce/turn than they have. They have a big lead in what's been accumulated, though. Our advantage in rate should keep increasing dramatically, note that we've only half our Warrens built so far, and less than half our Governor's Manors. The main question is whether we can ride that hard enough to overtake them in accumulation before they get to Balseraph Keelyn Archmages or similar, and pwn the world.

[Ellimist]

Okay, pictures will have to come later, but there are a few new developments to report.

First, we've met the Malakim/Amurites/Kurioates. We don't have visibility on any of their units, nor any new animals, so they probably met us with a floating eye. They already have Trade, so we're able to easily compare techs with them. I'm not at home right now, but the ones I remember them having are: Hunting, Way of Forests, Writing, Trade, Archery, and Festivals.

Sanitation came in this turn, giving us a MAJOR food boost across our two largest empires. The next techs we're going to get are going to give us a similar boost to commerce. The plan is: writing(3T), sailing(2T), trade(3T), and currency(5T). The timing on these is also likely to improve considerably, especially if we (temporarily) go back to binary and run 100% gold while building the libraries.

The two main Elohim cities continue to produce subdue animal scouts, and we've managed to capture a total of two griffons and one spider so far. We may also capture another griffon between turns.

The Clan have a ton of settlers being produced right now. I think the plan is for mostly east/west expansion and some filler cities. There's a lot of good land and we're in a good position to claim it, especially if we want defensible borders later on.

The Elohim will receive either a sage or prophet very soon at Whiskey. The plan if it's a sage is for an Academy at the Calabim capital, which will have completed our second Deruptus by then. After that, we'll probably add a bathhouse to that city.

We settled our first port city west of KIPA this turn, and I did a bit of fog reading toward the west. It definitely looks like there is an island over there. I'd like to divert some resources toward getting the new port city going ASAP, and send some boats over to settle it. Ideally, we want at least three island cities for the trade route benefits. Heron Throne could also be quickly built offshore with SoKs if we wanted to get maximum value out of it.