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

[Mardoc]

By which I meant, did you pick them because you had to pick a third and they'd be able to help with each group, or because ypu genuinely wanted Elohim.
Oh, and I suppose Sanctuary.

We wanted Philosophical, for early beaker production - early Academy, early libraries, cheap elder councils, for that matter. Tolerant is a bonus, and Cha seems to be working pretty well, but mainly it was about having a Philo leader to get us launched. That'll also become more apparent once we have Currency, 1 gold given to them is at least 2 beakers once you add in all the multipliers.

Honestly, they're less flashy, cause all they do is sit back and tech, but they've been most of our beakers most of the game, only overshadowed after we got to Aristocracy. And now that we're building them bigger, they'll be a lot of our beakers again.

Charismatic has been a nice bonus, too - maybe we'd have lost the Titan if we had to get a unit to 26 XP instead of 22.

[Thoth]

[ The extra gold right now would be very handy (I'd like to build a Thane in Riesling after the Granary and ferry it and the Calabim worker over to the Island. We'll need to cash rush a Galley out of Sherry circa t109 (I think) in order to ferry the Thane/worker over. I think it's worthwhile as that gets us a border pop in Sherry circa t111/112, and that lines up perfectly with the WB for the Whales (currently queued in Lakeport Honey). It also gets us two post Archery chops into Sherry's GM which will help speed the cities growth curve.

Actually, I think it's even more elegant than the above: We grow to size 4 in Sherry either eot 11 or 12 and Netted whales would be very nice to work as a 4th tile.

[Ellimist]

By which I meant, did you pick them because you had to pick a third and they'd be able to help with each group, or because ypu genuinely wanted Elohim.
Oh, and I suppose Sanctuary.

Well, we felt like they were the best available out of the choices we had left at the time.

Our available choices for third civ:
Bannor
Doviello
Elohim
Grigori
Illians
Lanun
Ljosalfar
Sheaim
Svartalfar

Some of those civs would have required a different tech path than what the Clan/Calabim would need, and we didn't want a civ that started with agriculture. We also didn't need a civ that would follow a role we already had filled, so certain traits weren't needed(EXP/FIN/RAI). I forget exactly which ones, but these constraints narrowed down that list considerably.

The Elohim leader we picked had powerful traits that we didn't have access to yet, CHA and PHI. Their hero is a good one and unlocked at a tech we plan to get anyway, and they can do some neat things with tolerant. The Elohim tech requirements are pretty minor, and their worldspell is one of the strongest ones in the game.

This way sound weird, but whats the Elohims "thing?"

You've got Jonas for REX/warrened units, and calabim for vamps - what have the Elohim contributed to your game?
Is it just "an extra" to go along with the clan/vamp duo?

So far, the main Elohim contributions have been providing early science and charismatic scouts. The PHI trait made it easy to get an early academy and at one point almost all of our beakers were coming from the Elohim. Later on, we spammed a ton of 4 exp scouts, which were able to take subdue animal thanks to the CHA trait. Those scouts then proceeded to capture a lot of powerful animals, which also cleared the way for further expansion.

At the moment, the Elohim definitely have the worst demographics of the three civs, but their contributions have helped enable the other two to become more powerful.

[Qgqqqqq]

CLEVER STUFF

Yeah all that was about what I was thinking - economy/teching, useful traits, doesn't force you in a different tech direction and useful WS/hero + not awful lot left. Didn't consider the starting techs though.
Good to have it explained though .
Do you have Dereptus btw?

[Thoth]

CLEVER STUFF

Yeah all that was about what I was thinking - economy/teching, useful traits, doesn't force you in a different tech direction and useful WS/hero + not awful lot left. Didn't consider the starting techs though.
Good to have it explained though .

Tolerant in a Team game is also quite handy. We haven't taken much advantage of it yet, but our last two and next 4 Elohim cities are built by Orc settlers so we'll have Warrens pumped Cha Shamans and Ogres in the not too distant future.

Do you have Dereptus btw?

We have two: one in the Elohim capital of Tequilla which we built quite early and helped pump our early Academy. Our other is in Reisling, the Vampire Capital. It was built much later but Reisling is up to size 17 and growing. With the Brewery and Academy it's by far our best science producer.

[Thoth]

Guys, I've been think more about the Orc GA and I'm increasingly convinced that we should yank the trigger t104 and aim for City States/Consumption/Mil State/FT/Undercouncil t109. The GA hammers will get us the second settler pair out of KIPA t 108 instead of 109 and I think we get the settler pair out of NBA either t108 or t109 vs 110.

That would give us settlers for: the far Western Sheep front city, the Elohim Uberfood port in the Far East, the Corn/marble spot, our 4th Island city in the West, our first island city in the Far East (once we figure out what turn Uberfood gets founded, I can arrange for two post-archery chops to build a 1 or 2 t galley) and a settler for either the Floodplains site in the south or our front city with the Clowns.

With the GA commerce, we should be able to do Currency by eot 106. Possibly even part way through t 106 so at least on civ can take advantage of the trs a turn early. 106 is also the turn we found our 3rd Island city.

[Thoth]

Couple more pics and some development thoughts:

Samual Adams, our first Orcish port city:

Not much of a hammer city, but with some grooming we can make this a very nice little commerce city. Current free happy cap is 7. With Pearls, Sugar and Ivory due online for the Orcs that rises to 10. With consumption and a Market we're up to 11. Once we settled some Eastern Islands the free happy rises to 12 with a second source of Whales (1st source needs to go to the Vamps I think). 100h for a bathhouse and we're up to size 15. What do we get?

Size 6 (t 105): We'll work the Netted Crabs (wb move t104, nets t105).
Size 7 (t 107): Add mined grass hill.
Size 8 (t108 I think): Work a GA grass forest (Lumbermill due t109/110)
Size 9: (t110): Work second GA grass forest (Lumbermill due t111/112)
Size 10: (t 112): Work coast. Last turn of GA.
Size 11: (? t114?): Work coast

Builds:

t104: Pop GA, keep same tile config. 7hpt + 1 overflow hammer +15% milstate--> 9 hpt
t105: Wb 9/20h. 8 net hpt
t106: wb 17/20
t107: 5 overflow from wb rounded down to 4. 11 hpt base + 4 overflow +15% miltstate-->17 hpt.
t108: 17/50 into Trireme. now 13 hpt 14 net.
t109: 30/50. If lumbermill done, we're now at 14 base hpt --> 16 with mil state else 15 net.
t110: 45 or 46/50. Lumber mill done, +2 hpt from second ga forest, 16 hpt -->18 net so either 13 or 14h overflow. figure 11 after rounding out the milstate bonus.
t111: tririme in the water, 27 hammers into market this turn
t112: market done at eot with around 4/5 hammers overflow.
t113: GA over. 12 hpt + 4-->32 hammers into Harbour. start pre-cottaging farms and Lumbermills, but don't finish yet.
t114: 32/67 hammers into harbour. + 24 hpt.
t115: 56/67 hammers into harbour, 3 coast tiles worked. size 11 +12 fpt, happy cap should be 12 by this point
t116: harbour done (+3 commerce from 3 worked sea tiles), Start light house at 12 hpt with a bit of overflow from harbour.
t117: we'll be size 12 at this point working 3 1/3c coast plus the 4f/3c crabs with about 20h into the lighthouse. We'll have 3 trs from tech, 1 tr from foriegn trade. The lighthouse will add another oversease tr and 4fp. 2 soks on hand around t 116 means LH done eot 116 or 117 depending on how close my projections are. We can save one sok by completing the cottages on the lumbermills for 26h, timed so that we complete the LH the turn the cottage completes. The 4f from the lh lets us convert 2f to cottages the following turn while still maintaining +9 fpt. +7 fpt with the third farm converted. That gets us to size 15 (working 5 FT cottages, sheep, grass mine, copper mine, crabs and 6 lighhoused/harboured coast tiles. We'll need about 10t to get there and a Bathhouse which will probably need a SoK or two to help rush it). At that point we have 21c from coast tiles, 15c from Villages and assuming we hit Conquest at that point ie ~t128, 4 trade routes at 3c each. More if the tr resolutions have been passed. So counting the base tile and the Sheep commerce we're bringing down 50 commerce per turn by t128 maybe a bit sooner. Under Consumption/Undercouncil that's 65 gpt not counting market or possible Temple of Killemorph (priest built from Warrens ofc). :hat:

[Commodore]

No love for Chm vampires?

[Mardoc]

No love for Chm vampires?

Elohim vampires can't Feast. [/NH]

[Thoth]

Riesling:

An awesome commerce monster and still has plenty of upside yet. We'll be stealing tiles back as we grow (though I've just noticed the "useless" Mana can and should be farmed pre-node techs. We've got a worker in the area who's been finishing up low priority tile improvements in the Calabim core. Should have the farm online t107 which times nicely for growth to size 19 and lets Zinfandel keep the grass farm for a couple of extra turns (which is good. ).

We have an Elohim Bear on the way to dance for the happy we need for the 19th tile (eta I'm not sure but somewhere around 106-108). We'll complete the Inn as we grow to size 20 which both covers the happy we need to work the last tile and at size 20 the 25% trade route bonus stacked with the +25% Connection to capital and +50% for pop gives us +1 commerce from our existing trade routes and an additional +2 or +3 commerce from the Inn traderoute. Based on galley movements, the earliest we can settle a 4th Western Island city is around turn 109/110 but we'll need to double check in game. Having that 4th Island city t109 would be worth ~15c in Orcdom with the FT swap and 1.2 c in Riesling. Also: new Western Island cities will start with a +4 and 2 +3 c traderoutes once we get currency and grow Riesling to size 18.

Beyond that, we'll want to grow the city as much as practical pre-feasting. We can do 3t Vampires at size 20. If we can grow from 20->21 each turn that means a 59xp Vampire every three turns (counting FotT and a command post). I'm 99% certain we can and that's pretty solid output. Better is if we can grow from 22-->23 each turn as that will get us a 65 xp (ie 8 promos plus Commando) Vamp every three turns.

Once Zinfandel is fully up and running with HE, CP, Mil State and growth we'll be close to a Vampire a turn here. We won't ever feast Zinfandel except in the most dire of emergencies. I'm aiming for 0 fpt at size 18, but I haven't looked at the growth curve here closely yet. So we'll want a city capable of growing from 14-15 each turn nearby to get feasted on. (with CP/fotT we can close in on a 17 xp vampire per turn with a slight delay in the pipeline due to moving to feast)

This city:

Is dismal. It is by far the worst city in the whole empire. We'll get it farmed up soon, but we're pinching worker turns from this city atm in order to get some good cities up and running. The second farm completes t104 and the workers are on road detail until t108 when they'll help complete a 1t Wet Corn Farm the same turn we found Rum.

We'll have some more workers moving through the area in a few turns once we finish up the tile improvements (2 more farms, a plains cottage and a pair of lumbermills) in the city west of here. Those tile improvements have priority as we will have a Library complete in a couple of turns and still have some infra to go (Temple, bathhouse, training yard)

If we can get Turdpile farmed up fast enough, it'll make a fine Feast bitch for Zinfandel's Vampires.