out of the loop Q vs OldLion

[Old_Lion]

No reactions.
Are we going too fast ?

I have a question :




I researched Way of the earthmother. founding next turn. Also I spawned a prophet.
He can give me priesthood, so I have 4 options :
- Priesthood
- Luonnatar
- either one of leaves or earthmother special religion building.

What would you do ?

[Bobchillingworth]

Priesthood, no doubt about it. Just make sure you settle some more cities before using your world spell.

[Old_Lion]

There have been 7 turns between my post and your answer.
you guys are not keeping up with the game rythm..

Obviously, I chooses to build the tables of Bambur. :-( I want money, my GNP is way below Q's

So I have a question :
Why was Priesthood the obvious good choice ? can you explain the main ideas in 2/3 sentences .

[Aurorarcher]

Why Tablets of Bambur? Isn't there more FoL cities? I think Song of Autumn would have given more money, if that's what you wanted. I still think Priestood would've been better, you need it for your worldspell anyway sooner or later! Priestood is relatively expensive tech early on and you can fully bulb it with Prophet IIRC.

[Bobchillingworth]

Why Priesthood:


* It's expensive to research on its own; bulbing saves you hundreds of beakers, which by comparison probably no shrine will pay back before the end of the game.

* You need Priesthood to use your World Spell, which is a powerful one best used early.

* Priests of the Leaves are the best units you could build right now. Stonewardens are pretty good as well.

* You didn't need the Earth Mana from the shrine, which is one of the main benefits.

[Old_Lion]

OK, I got it.

It will hep me in the future.
For some reason, I have a association in my mind : earthmother = mining and money = what I need, so I tend to just go that way here where I need money (awful GNP)

I now facepalmed all I needed, especially after realizing Sanding stone already gave earth mana.
Well. I'll still try to make my best.

It is hard to maintain a decent pace and still wait for comments.

I build the bone palace. I have an opportunity to change civics free of charge. What else can I and should I do during golden age ?
Also, I switched to priethood. 6 turns research while maintaining a surplus.

I want started building some unit because my power is lagging behind.

and... I'm thinking to build forests in the west because elves are at such an advantage there. Is that a stupid idea or a waste of time ?

[Mardoc]

It will hep me in the future.
For some reason, I have a association in my mind : earthmother = mining and money = what I need, so I tend to just go that way here where I need money (awful GNP)

It helps, yes. Usually I'd think other things are better for cash, though: Education for cottages, Code of Laws for Aristocracy, or Cartography for city states, depending on the reason you need cash and what else your empire is doing. Kilmorph can only give you three gold per city, if I remember right, while cottages or aristocracy can be worth 10-50 gold per city.

It is hard to maintain a decent pace and still wait for comments.

Well, there will always be another game, you can apply our comments to the next one if you have to.

I build the bone palace. I have an opportunity to change civics free of charge. What else can I and should I do during golden age ?

I'm pretty sure you're Spiritual, right? You can swap civics for free anyway. The other thing I'd consider, if you weren't already Spiritual, would be swapping a religion.

Golden ages are good in general, though. They boost so many tiles, double great person production. Mostly you just do the same things you'd do anyway - work a lot of improved tiles, build and research stuff.

I want started building some unit because my power is lagging behind.

Priests (especially from your worldspell) are pretty good for that.

Edit: And/or go cheap. I think I showed you what you can do with pure numbers, warriors are surprisingly powerful because they're cheap. Especially if you've found any copper since your last update.

and... I'm thinking to build forests in the west because elves are at such an advantage there. Is that a stupid idea or a waste of time ?

Um. Not stupid, but I don't know if it's the best thing you could do, either. You can't make it work as well as elves, because you can only put lumbermills on forests. So it shouldn't be a main focus. But if you have some cities that can't get enough hammers from mines, and you have Priests of Leaves anyway for military, you might as well plant some trees instead of having them just sit around.

[Qgqqqqq]

Okay, so I set this duel up as a bit of a comparison one - very similar leaders (same traits for first 70t) with similar focuses. Looking back, we kinda moved away from that in the early game - me finding Ygg with my leader, the short-lived Lizardmen choke, but I still think it's useful comparatively.

In general, my combination is better in long-term than Varn, but Varn has a very good mindset/setup for the early game of a duel. In your place, my vague thought was towards a quick beeline up FoL or RoK, bulbing Priesthood t60/70ish, trait-switching to AGG and casting Religious Fervor for a Priest rush that hits home in the t80 range.

My play, btw, was basically research up to FoL and Education, expand at a decent clip and get a GS for an Academy at home. Once I had FoL I jumped around a bit with a couple of probably suboptimal plays (BW, Archery for Gilden, toying with Drama), but eventually researched Priesthood and built a strong Priest force for blooming/collecting xp/warding off Acheron and Orthus, then went by Drama for the center culture-bomb and MS for the GC for a GA.

If I had to say the fundamental reason I was able to win this, it's because you were unable to build a strong enough lead coming out of the early game (where lazy Elvish workers, tree-building, and a slightly weaker foodhammer cap were working against me) and then didn't act aggressively in the mid-game. This let me get to the stage where the Elven Economy came into its own with a strong (and actually slightly stronger) economy, and I could build that up unmolested.

I'll break it down a bit more, from memory:

• Early on you seemed to build up a vast force of warriors - you were ahead of me in power in a big way, iirc, from the Lizards to Priesthood and my PoL buildup. But these were a) non-copper warriors, and b) never used aggressively. I think a wiser strategy would have involved a bit more active anti-barb defence (if this is what they were for) allowing less hammers needed for warriors (I had between 1 and 3 units per city for a long time, because I was able to accumulate a lot of promotions) or spared those you had for aggressive action.
  
• Related to the above, you didn't adopt Apprenticeship at all, despite getting education in reasonable time (judging by the town). I think losing the Religion happy would have been easily worth +2xp from a very early stage - or even eating the -10%hpt.
  
• Moving back to the lizard choke. That situation sucked, but I think you could have been able to be more active in breaking it with a quick exploration for roads to kill my lizards from the fog. Relatedly, it's almost always the best practice to have exploration before building a second city if you can't connect it with a river (it's worth +2cpt).
  
• I think the best city-building advice I could give would be to found your cities closer together. I would've founded your second city 2S, sharing the capital corn and a grass, and picking up an additional FP. Sure, it loses the Ygg, but sharing just the grass farm is superior to that because it can work it from gamestart (and it makes a city picking up the incense and Ygg easier to slot). And whilst it might look like it would have a worse military position, remember that my lizards were unpromoted scrubs - they'd have been forced to retreat from you, and it would've put them in an easier position for resupply. My second and third cities shared (with the capital), between them, 13 tiles, and 4 of those were shared by all three cities, and you better believe that each was swapping back to back in the frenzied pursuit of optimal micro. And this is as the elves - the quintessential big city nation! Even right at the end I still hadn't reached capacity or been forced to work specialists, because the happy cap honestly wasn't that high. The only reason my last four cities were so far away is that I was trying to claim and secure your territory.
  
• Trait-switch to Financial was a big mistake, IMO. I realise this was when you were falling behind on GNP, but honestly the best answer to that is founding for commerce resources (such as the sadly-unclaimed incense, or the barb silk you could've taken culturally), settle closer together, keep spamming workers->cottages, and - if necessary - go for Cartography and City-States. Honestly, Expansive would've made a better economic trait, but I think Org/Cha/Agg would've been much better for the impending Religious Fervor/military expansionism.
  
• Half the real advantage to SPI priests comes in the xp accumulation. That was how I had so many C4 priests - most of them hadn't fought for it, just picked it up over time. I realise that you probably hadn't realised how boss Gilden Silveric was (those Enchanted Arrows came from a lair ), but I think you definitely should've fired it sooner, if only to start picking up more xp.
  
• Tablets of Bambur. I don't quite get where this came from, and I didn't follow the birth rates, but I'm pretty sure you researched PH naturally? IMO would've been better to bulb with this guy, or at least to build Song of the Autumn.
  
• Units were a bit haphazard - I saw SoK, Archers and swordsmen. In your place I'd look to traits and map - copper is a bit difficult to acquire, so swords/SoK are going to be meh (but think yourself lucky - it took me like 30t to wrestle my copper off Acheron), Archers are generally quite bad, so what to build? I went with a mixed fawn/hunter, but in retrospect just ignoring them entirely in favor of priests and supplementary warriors would've probably been wiser.
  

I know there's more, but this list is getting too long and I'm getting tired.

Anyway, I don't want to come across as too negative - you played a good game, and pulled the wool over me a few times, and had tremendous good spirit despite some pretty shitty events (lizards, especially). I really enjoyed the game

[Old_Lion]

Q :

I went through part of your game using your saves and your password.

Whatstrike me is how little defense you had.

Somr turns you end with one scout at 0.4 strength in your only city and a barb lizard outside.
Did you sweat or was everything rather under control at all time ?

[Qgqqqqq]

Everything was under control. If you give me the turn number I can (look it up, and then) tell you exactly what was going on.

Remember, my cap could one-turn warriors from an early stage.

Edit: But yeah, I always had just enough strength necessary to defend, never a surplus. There were a couple of times where I misplayed that, and it delayed improvements a touch, but never when I thought there was a good chance of losing a city - or even a chance at all, after the first dozen turns or so when that close ruins was a worry.