The good news is, we're doing very well in this game. The bad news is, turns take freakin 3 hours to play - and adding more people playing doesn't seem to speed us up much, since we use all the time we save moving units in talking/planning. So you get just the overview, for now. Maybe tonight, if the turn hasn't come back, I'll give you pictures and such.
We've just picked up Trade. That increased the orcish econ from about 30 gpt at max gold to about 70, between the trade routes and Undercouncil. That's a pretty good illustration of where we are - teetering on the brink of overexpansion, but pretty sure that we'll be able to grow our econ faster than we grow our expenses. Why?
Well, for overexpansion, we just settled 3 cities last turn. That was high, but not incredibly so, we're settling at least one/turn recently. They're so cheap with Expansive Warrens, and they grow up so fast with Sanitation Aristofarms and this incredibly lush land. Cities go from new to solid contributors in the blink of an eye, it seems.
We've got Trade now, 2 settlers on a galley next turn and a third available soon, and we're researching Currency. The first half of T100, we had 1 gpt in trade per city. By the end of T110 or so, we expect that to be 6 gpt. Meanwhile, all our cities are growing quite quickly, all but a handful of orcish core cities, and they're growing mostly onto aristofarms. We're adding happiness in Elohimia fast enough to keep up with the growth, and in Calabimia we don't particularly care if the citizens are happy
. Ok, we do a little, but they're worth having either way.
Also, although we're still expanding at breakneck speed for the moment, the end is in sight. In the east, we've now spotted Clownish borders within about 4 tiles of the closest Calabim, and Luch borders within about 6 of the closest Elohim. We've got some room to fill in the non-closest spots, but there's a limit coming until we manage to raze a couplefew of their cities. In the west, the limit seems less close, as we've only spotted Malakim borders once, ~5 tiles from our closest Orc city. And in the north, we've definitely still got a good bit of room as well, we haven't even spotted the Reddit team yet. Plus whatever we can claim from the sea, which I think is currently uncontested except by the barbs. That probably adds up to 20 more cities possible. Which...really isn't that much of our possible effort - keep 2 of our 20+ cities on settler duty, and keep scraping up workers and garrisons, and we'll be 'done' by T120.
So, pretty soon we'll be stalled in expansion, until we get some killing done. Fortunately, we're still pretty much in the phase of the game where cultural control and roads make a huge difference, so whatever we can claim, we'll probably keep. For now. It's also why, despite wanting it gone, the newest Balseraph city is going to remain for a while yet. Heck, we're not even firmly convinced that it's worth taking barb cities - and that's a lot easier than taking cities from our foes.
I expect our ratio to keep shifting from econ toward war. We've already got ~4 cities on military builds at any given time, which is just enough military to stop a weakish invasion. Graphs suggest a weakish invasion is all anyone else is capable of just now. We've got something like 25-30 cities now, though, so you can see our military investment is still pretty low. We've been spending on Public Baths, libraries, a Great Library, settlers/workers, temples, culture...all sorts of useful things but not heavy into military.
Our gameplan seems to be working out pretty well. We're definitely #1 in expansion, I don't think anyone's even close. We've got something like 37% of world population. 37%! It's even better in hammers: 370 hammers vs rest of the world's 594 (38%), not counting that 120 of that is Clan and being fed through Warrens. Although our GNP is probably in third, it's about to explode as we research the trade techs. And as our expansion rate slows and the cities all grow onto aristofarms, for that matter. In tech, we're behind both Team 3 and 4, but we're not too far behind. And, we're starting to ratchet up border tensions right as Vampires and Ogres are looking feasible
.
Subprojects:
After that, it's less well defined. We want a whole grab bag of techs, but exactly which order to get them in is iffier:
Festivals - Consumption happiness to replace the temples, and Market cash is handy regardless.
Hunting - mostly for the ivory, furs, and deer, although Hunters would be good insurance against a Priest of Leaves invasion
Animal Handling - non-Lacuna sight!
Archery - Lumbermills, chop improvement, maybe a smidgen of actual archer builds
Knowledge of the Ether - shamans with free Haste to boost our whole army. Plus a few other useful spells, and a prereq for AV.
Feudalism - Vampires
Iron Working - Ogres and beefier vamps
Corruption of Spirit/Philosophy/Priesthood - Monks and Ritualists
Everytime we discuss it, our plans shift a bit, but I think the current plan is something like:
Currency -> Hunting -> Festivals -> Archery -> Feudalism -> Animal Handling.
The basic idea is to finish the last few key econ techs, then go straight for the jugular with vampires. There's still enough room for peaceful expansion, and enough effectiveness with Moroi and Chariots and Cats, that we don't need to improve our military tech quite this instant. Plus we'll be following in the footsteps of the other teams on the econ route, and hence continue to get the known civ bonus to our GNP. Finally, we've still enough economic investments desired, and cities to grow, that we couldn't make full use of something like Feudalism even if we had it tomorrow. Too many Manors and Training Yards unbuilt, too many Warrens in progress, too many cities that still need to grow up.
That'll take long enough that we'll want to reevaluate, but Iron Working is likely to be soon after. Vampires' summons are likely to be good enough for collateral, that we'll want high Str above all. I honestly expect Vampires to be sufficient to rule the world, if we press them hard enough, except during the arcane lacuna where Ogres will rule the roost instead. If I'm wrong about that - or if we feel the need for more vampire food - then we'll take Ashen Veil instead and go on to Infernal Pact.
We don't yet have any defined plans for dealing with the other teams. It's pretty much simply a plan to grow and build and take opportunities as they come, right now. Maybe that'll change once we have a big enough military to try something fancy - but we also don't want to invite defeat in detail.
We've just picked up Trade. That increased the orcish econ from about 30 gpt at max gold to about 70, between the trade routes and Undercouncil. That's a pretty good illustration of where we are - teetering on the brink of overexpansion, but pretty sure that we'll be able to grow our econ faster than we grow our expenses. Why?
Well, for overexpansion, we just settled 3 cities last turn. That was high, but not incredibly so, we're settling at least one/turn recently. They're so cheap with Expansive Warrens, and they grow up so fast with Sanitation Aristofarms and this incredibly lush land. Cities go from new to solid contributors in the blink of an eye, it seems.
We've got Trade now, 2 settlers on a galley next turn and a third available soon, and we're researching Currency. The first half of T100, we had 1 gpt in trade per city. By the end of T110 or so, we expect that to be 6 gpt. Meanwhile, all our cities are growing quite quickly, all but a handful of orcish core cities, and they're growing mostly onto aristofarms. We're adding happiness in Elohimia fast enough to keep up with the growth, and in Calabimia we don't particularly care if the citizens are happy
. Ok, we do a little, but they're worth having either way.Also, although we're still expanding at breakneck speed for the moment, the end is in sight. In the east, we've now spotted Clownish borders within about 4 tiles of the closest Calabim, and Luch borders within about 6 of the closest Elohim. We've got some room to fill in the non-closest spots, but there's a limit coming until we manage to raze a couplefew of their cities. In the west, the limit seems less close, as we've only spotted Malakim borders once, ~5 tiles from our closest Orc city. And in the north, we've definitely still got a good bit of room as well, we haven't even spotted the Reddit team yet. Plus whatever we can claim from the sea, which I think is currently uncontested except by the barbs. That probably adds up to 20 more cities possible. Which...really isn't that much of our possible effort - keep 2 of our 20+ cities on settler duty, and keep scraping up workers and garrisons, and we'll be 'done' by T120.
So, pretty soon we'll be stalled in expansion, until we get some killing done. Fortunately, we're still pretty much in the phase of the game where cultural control and roads make a huge difference, so whatever we can claim, we'll probably keep. For now. It's also why, despite wanting it gone, the newest Balseraph city is going to remain for a while yet. Heck, we're not even firmly convinced that it's worth taking barb cities - and that's a lot easier than taking cities from our foes.
I expect our ratio to keep shifting from econ toward war. We've already got ~4 cities on military builds at any given time, which is just enough military to stop a weakish invasion. Graphs suggest a weakish invasion is all anyone else is capable of just now. We've got something like 25-30 cities now, though, so you can see our military investment is still pretty low. We've been spending on Public Baths, libraries, a Great Library, settlers/workers, temples, culture...all sorts of useful things but not heavy into military.
Our gameplan seems to be working out pretty well. We're definitely #1 in expansion, I don't think anyone's even close. We've got something like 37% of world population. 37%! It's even better in hammers: 370 hammers vs rest of the world's 594 (38%), not counting that 120 of that is Clan and being fed through Warrens. Although our GNP is probably in third, it's about to explode as we research the trade techs. And as our expansion rate slows and the cities all grow onto aristofarms, for that matter. In tech, we're behind both Team 3 and 4, but we're not too far behind. And, we're starting to ratchet up border tensions right as Vampires and Ogres are looking feasible
.Subprojects:
- We're going at breakneck pace to settle some islands. We think. Fogreading suggests we've found an island to the NW of the Clan, big enough for two cities, but we haven't scouted it completely yet. We founded a port, rushbought a galley before we even finished the city's workboat, and will be sending it out next turn loaded with 2 settlers and an axe. It'll prove island or no island, and hopefully settle two overseas cities by T104 or so. This is a bit risky, to say the least. Literally sailing our galley out into the fog, loaded full and barely escorted. Although at least the settlers are cheap. But island cities will be worth something like 30 gpt each, discounting any value from the city itself. So it's worth the rush, and the risk.
- We're building the Great Library. It's ~5 turns out, but with marble it seemed pretty cheap. Elohim would benefit from the free sage, they're going to start collecting GPP in earnest soon. And the beaker boost would be small but useful.
- We're building a reaction defense force, catapults and wolf riders and Moroi, and soon chariots as well. Idea here is simply to use our roads to kill anyone who invades. It's not yet enough to stop all three Priests of Winter, but we haven't yet convinced team Clown to take us that seriously, they seem to be using the PoW on defense instead.
- We've got a screen of scouts out, for a combination of collecting animals and preventing surprises (especially spider surprises). We've been ridiculously lucky with them. We've got something like 7 griffons and 2 spiders and a wolf captured, with minimal casualties. I think we've lost one scout. Every time, we set up a bait scout and a capturing scout, bait with poor odds (although admittedly, in defensive terrain), and every time we log in to find the bait scout riding his beatup new pet.
- We're harrassing team Clown. Not yet particularly seriously, a spider and a few axes and wolf riders. Idea here is to use our hammer advantage to force them to spend on non-mage military, in this era. Hopefully we can get them to garrison every border city with a couple swords, and cover every worker with another. Stuff that will work now, today, to keep them safe from our harassers, but will die quickly to vampires and ogres. The trick, of course, is to do this on the cheap. We want the best hammer ratio we can get; practically anything better than 1:1 is probably a win for us given our hammer lead, but in an ideal world we provide just enough presense, spread out enough, to make them spend on units that won't be useful in 20 turns. So far we've accomplished giving a sword XP from a wolf rider and an axe, pillaging their rice, and destroying a worker/slave pair. But we see garrisoning their closest city a scout, 2 swords, a good Freak, and an Ice Elemental (so a PoW must be close). So we're actually kinda succeeding, there. We intend to spread out and make them do that in more cities, if we can.
And in general, we want them to think and build defensively. Although we're building a defensive force too, the best way to defend our territory is to make them so focused on their own that they don't really think about invading us.
- We're debating doing the same to team Wizard. On the one hand, the same arguments apply, or even more so - Amurite mages are a much scarier investment of their hammers than Amurite swords. On the other, ideally we'd be at peace with them and they'd also harass team golem. And they have Floating Eyes, so harassment would work slightly less well.
After that, it's less well defined. We want a whole grab bag of techs, but exactly which order to get them in is iffier:
Festivals - Consumption happiness to replace the temples, and Market cash is handy regardless.
Hunting - mostly for the ivory, furs, and deer, although Hunters would be good insurance against a Priest of Leaves invasion
Animal Handling - non-Lacuna sight!
Archery - Lumbermills, chop improvement, maybe a smidgen of actual archer builds
Knowledge of the Ether - shamans with free Haste to boost our whole army. Plus a few other useful spells, and a prereq for AV.
Feudalism - Vampires
Iron Working - Ogres and beefier vamps
Corruption of Spirit/Philosophy/Priesthood - Monks and Ritualists
Everytime we discuss it, our plans shift a bit, but I think the current plan is something like:
Currency -> Hunting -> Festivals -> Archery -> Feudalism -> Animal Handling.
The basic idea is to finish the last few key econ techs, then go straight for the jugular with vampires. There's still enough room for peaceful expansion, and enough effectiveness with Moroi and Chariots and Cats, that we don't need to improve our military tech quite this instant. Plus we'll be following in the footsteps of the other teams on the econ route, and hence continue to get the known civ bonus to our GNP. Finally, we've still enough economic investments desired, and cities to grow, that we couldn't make full use of something like Feudalism even if we had it tomorrow. Too many Manors and Training Yards unbuilt, too many Warrens in progress, too many cities that still need to grow up.
That'll take long enough that we'll want to reevaluate, but Iron Working is likely to be soon after. Vampires' summons are likely to be good enough for collateral, that we'll want high Str above all. I honestly expect Vampires to be sufficient to rule the world, if we press them hard enough, except during the arcane lacuna where Ogres will rule the roost instead. If I'm wrong about that - or if we feel the need for more vampire food - then we'll take Ashen Veil instead and go on to Infernal Pact.
We don't yet have any defined plans for dealing with the other teams. It's pretty much simply a plan to grow and build and take opportunities as they come, right now. Maybe that'll change once we have a big enough military to try something fancy - but we also don't want to invite defeat in detail.
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker
Occasional mapmaker
. Might even include worldspells.
