[SPOILER] Yell0w - Rivanna, Svartalfar

[Yell0w]

American Pancakes

Ingredients:
3 large free-range eggs
100 g whole spelt flour
20 g wheat flour
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
140 ml milk
1 pinch salt

Method
First separate the eggs, putting the whites into one bowl and the yolks into another. Add the flour, baking powder and milk to the yolks and mix to a smooth thick batter. Whisk the whites with the salt until they form stiff peaks. Fold into the batter – it is now ready to use.

Heat a good non-stick pan on a medium heat. Pour some of your batter into the pan and fry for a couple of minutes until it starts to look golden and firm. At this point sprinkle your chosen flavouring (see below) on to the uncooked side before loosening with a spatula and flipping the pancake over. Continue frying until both sides are golden.

You can make these pancakes large or small, to your liking. You can serve them simply doused in maple syrup and even with some butter or crème fraîche. Or if you choose to sprinkle with a flavouring, try one of these...

fresh corn from the cob
crispy bacon or pancetta
blueberries
banana
stewed apple
grated chocolate
anything else you can imagine...

PS: You've got to eat those with whole strips of bacon baked into the dough and Canadian maple syrup.

[Yell0w]

So my picks were

1. Flauros - Calabim
2. Rivanna - Svartalfar
3. Amelanchier - Ljosalfar
4. Sandalphon - Sidar
5. Beeri Bawl - Luchuirp


I picked one strong leader, and then a bunch of leaders I plan to go FotL and Recon units with, I wanted to try that out. If I should get Flauros I plan to utilize Slavery.


Still looking for a dedlurker.

[Barry Lyndon]

Why Flauros over Decius?

[Yell0w]

Well one part I already said: I want to utilize the Slavery civic, so getting half cost Governors Mansions isn't that attractive. Command posts are great but require a significant hammer investment at a point in the game you want to build units.
Also in my opinion you kind of need to chase drama with Decius giving you culture and Sanitation. Otherwise you need to invest significant hammers into Monuments, or found a religion, which means a significant tech investment.

I think Calabim overall are pretty strong. The Moroi unit is great, very great, available early and with a long time of usefulness. The next level of units are Vampires which are pretty ridiculous, but require a hefty tech investment, though not as much as almost all other endgame units. The extra granary with +2 food is great as well. The synergy with slavery is obvious to me.

Flauros has creative which saves a lot of hammers and makes a huge impact in settling cities, I think due to the cost of acquiring culture this is one of the T1 traits in EitB, at least if coupled with a civ that doesn't want to go for a religion early anyways. I want to go a very straight path towards Vampires, and not going for Drama or Sanitation is worth it I think.

On the other hand researching Festivals is with Fin/Cre really worth it, I can use both Markets and Carnivals, still Philosophy and after that CoL will probably be better, that is one of the hard early decisions I would have to make.

Fin is otherwise fine, in this case I won't couple it with a gold focused economy but the 25% extra gold will save some bakers and let me keep an event pool easier.

Raiders is great of course but I feel that Calabim units are good enough without it, if you get them fast enough, and I'll get them quicker with Flauros. Also Flauros synergizes better with Slavery

[Barry Lyndon]

Hmm. I agree that slavery is a good choice for the Calabim, but whipping a 120 hammer building wil usually cost about 4-6 population and thus require size 8-12 cities to do it. If you were organized, you could whip 2-3 population instead and get them built sooner. (Slavery is worth 20 hammers per population, right?)

Financial is pretty good, but the loss of passive gold savings from Organized takes some of the shine off. Creative in general seems a bit lackluster, but maybe I'm just biased. Religions give culture, happiness, and plenty of other bonuses as well, so I've never really wanted to skip them.

I guess Financial and Creative are definitely stronger in the earliest stages of the game, but cheaper manors(+ etc.) makes a huge difference later.

[Yell0w]

Hmm. I agree that slavery is a good choice for the Calabim, but whipping a 120 hammer building wil usually cost about 4-6 population and thus require size 8-12 cities to do it. If you were organized, you could whip 2-3 population instead and get them built sooner. (Slavery is worth 20 hammers per population, right?)

I don't know. I think Decius is superior if you go for Aristocracy/CoL asap, then just build the Mansions, making the detour to slavery is less worth it, especially cause this means running Aristocracy without Agrarianism. I plan to go for CoL a little bit later.

I can't really make a coherent argument, thing is I wanted to use slavery and I played a couple of single player games with Flauros and Decius before deciding, and I felt that Decius synergized really well with rushing CoL while Flauros fits Slavery and my playstyle better

I guess Financial and Creative are definitely stronger in the earliest stages of the game, but cheaper manors(+ etc.) makes a huge difference later.

I think due to utilizing slavery cheaper manors won't weigh that much.

[Barry Lyndon]

We'll see (hopefully.) I don't see Flauros as weak, and maybe the (apparent) consensus is wrong.

What do you think of the opposition? How aggressive do you plan to be if you get Flauros or Rivanna?

[Yell0w]

We'll see (hopefully.) I don't see Flauros as weak, and maybe the (apparent) consensus is wrong.

What do you think of the opposition? How aggressive do you plan to be if you get Flauros or Rivanna?

That really depends on what the map looks like, how valuable the terrain is, what my opponents are doing and so on, generally speaking I don't want to be aggressive if it costs me more than earn me.

With Flauros I'll either attack with Moroi if the opportunity presents itself, or wait for Vampires. With Rivanna things are more complicated.

[Barry Lyndon]

That makes sense. I've noticed that people here like to play risky early on, so early aggression might be worthwhile.

[Yell0w]

Random.org says the following:

Sian	GMT 1500 - 1900	Decius of the Calabim
Yell0w	GMT 1600 - 2100	Rivanna of the Svartalfar
Brian Shanahan	GMT 1900 - 2400	Varn Gosam of the Malakim
HidingKneel	GMT 0100 - 0300	Auric Ulvin of the Illians

Well, someone wanted Decius and got him =)
Rivanna will be way more difficult to play well, but I'm looking forward to it.