Enlightened Sidar

[Ichabod]

Anyone who uses the pseudo-word "malus" instead of "penalty" should be dipped in honey and staked out over an anthill.

Be grateful I didn't use "mali" as the plural of malus. You know, bonus -> boni, therefore malus -> mali.

I actually thought about what I couls use instead of maluses when word striked it as wrong, but I couldn't think of a suitable word. I'll use penalty as of know, it really seems better.

[Ichabod]

Turn 9



You may be asking yourself why I started this report with a tech splash screen. You have seen enough of those after more than 40 FFH PBEMs, right? Am I implying you guys don't know that Agriculture enables farms? Well, that's because this is one of just six techs we plan to get while playing the Sidar, so it’s a big deal. We won’t be seeing much of those and I’m definetely savoring the moment…………........ Ok, enough! Now we head to Mysticism, one of the key objectives of the run!

In more interesting news, the turn showed no sign of lizardmen defenders, so our path was free to get the map rid of their threat.



Then I realized something. If I grabbed the Healing Salve before moving, that would count as casting, which means I wouldn’t be able to explore the lair upon arriving on top of it (exploring also counts as casting). I could always explore the lair next turn, but that’d risk getting my scout killed by a barbarian in the inter-turn; there was quite a bit of unrevealed tiles close to the ruins. So, I decided to not take the Healing Salve this turn and, instead, go for the lair exploration. I can go back to the salve later, if I want to, and, frankly, it isn’t that big of a deal if I don't. And... Well, I'm just rationalizing the fact that I was very curious to see the lair result and really wanted to pop it this turn…



…….Just creating some tension……..



And I failed to get the result in the screenshot. The Wanderer received XP for exploring the lair, going up to 7 XP now (1 for each lair explored + 5 for the XP lair result). Overall, I was really lucky with these lair shenanigans: no defenders (up to turn 9!), two positive results, including a very useful one (the XP). We can reach level 3 with The Wanderer already and I’m debating what promotions to take… Probably combat 2, since we don’t have access to woodsman II yet (there's a tech requirement for this promo in FFH).



I’m debating if I want to go back for the Salve next turn… Two turns without newly revealed tiles makes me very sad (because the scout moves are the only exciting things we’ll see in the following 79 turns, considering a t88 Hyborem). By the way, if The Wanderer dies, someone wake me up six months from now, please. (we don't have any sleepy smilie?)



This is the riskier turn from The Yearner’s road back home. No defense bonus, fogged tiles where gryphons could be lurking… Next turn we’ll have a bit of safety in the forest, at least… Will he swim this much, only to die on the beach? Find out next turn!



Another cheap micro trick (from our Civ 4 elementary course) -> instead of moving directly to the corn, we can get a “free” worker turn by moving once and farming, then moving to the corn next turn and start farming. Wow!! I bet you didn’t know about that. Well, if you want to learn difficult micro tricks, TBS and Thoth threads are that way --->, in the BTS Pitboss alley, where all the cool kids hang. We FFHers are the Goth kids from the Civ 4 School or something…



2 – 20% = 1

Thank you, Civ 4 Math, I didn’t know that! And it seems 2 – 20% = “we just got shafted” would also be accepted as a correct answer. Yay for the 16 turn warriors! Well, I could put hammers on a Palisade or something (waiting for GK to counter the -20% penalty - thanks, Thoth! – before building units), overflowing it into the PT or EC when Myst is ready (I intend to do this with the warrior, to get a quicker PT or EC), but that’d mean losing one of the buildings I could overflow cascade into the PoR, and the cheapest one too, which I think is a bad deal. My test showed me that the more builds you have to overflow cascade, the better, because you accumulate more turns of production, so I don’t want to waste the palisade when I can use a warrior. Besides, the warrior is more useful than the Palisade right now.

I probably should have tested if revolting to the Religion civic on this turn (to get rid of the penalty on units) would be a good deal, but that ship has sailed. Since our main bottleneck for the early parts of our plan is science, I think the revolt wouldn’t be a good thing anyway. We don’t really care that much about hammers outside of the turns we are building the EC, the PT, the PoR and the Temple of Veil, and these early hammers don’t help much with that.

So, for now, Celo grows and we slow-and-I-mean-really-slow-build the warrior! That’s it for now, because I just received the next turn in my inbox and I’ll go play it. Two turns days for the win!

[Ichabod]

Turn 10



You know, that elephant there is pretty good news for us. Barbs also work as spawn-busters against barbs, so this pacifist elephant will secure the SW part of our continent as long as it stays there doing nothing. How nice!

………..

Yeah, you know a turn was boring when I’m forced to talk about the usefulness of pachyderms against the hypothetical rise of orcish wildlife…



You may have guessed already that I’ve sent The Wanderer back for the Healing Salve, as a study in the question of "can someone die from Civ 4 boredom?". Results are inconclusive so far; I’m not exactly doing very well now, but I think I’ll survive until turn 12.



The Wanderer went for combat 2, eyeing a future sentry promotion (eyeing a sentry, get it? ), that requires combat 3. I need 10 XP more! Why sentry, you ask? To go back safely to Celo in order to get the final XP needed to become a Wane, of course. In that case, The Wanderer will become The Wanerer…..................



Farm, farm, farm; grow, grow, grow; I need to summon Hyborem; before starting the show!

[Mardoc]

So does your microplan assume any wanes? If you can make some, does that change your ETA significantly?

[Ichabod]

So does your microplan assume any wanes? If you can make some, does that change your ETA significantly?

My current microplans assume no fortunate circumstances (except that no one will beat me to Prophecy of Ragnarok, but that's a bit of a given, I think), so no wanes, no mixed GPP pools, no event/hut/lair luck. I highly doubt I'll get a Wane, but, out of the top of my head, an engineer could help getting the PoR and the ToV done faster and a scientist could help by reaching Philo and CoS faster; not sure what's best, but both would likely have a considerable impact (my guess is the Engineer would be better, since it helps with both hammers and the little science that would make thigns faster - science after CoS is basically useless). It's just a guess, but if I settled an engineer around the time I finish Mysticism/halfway through Philosophy, I could take some 10 turns of the expected Hyborem date. But that's an optimistic guess, really.

I'm still debating about how to make things faster in the rush, and the amount of risk I want to take. I'm probably going to run some sage specialists here and there, since they help with our major bottlenecks, pre-Infernal Pact beakers and GPP. Besides, if we get a GSage early from a mixed GPP pool (I expect to keep the GPro odds in 80% at least), it's not as bad as getting it later (which would be disastrous). I'm probably going to run the sages in the second GProphet pool, because this way I get Philo faster (very important) and there'll be more GPro points in the mix, resulting in less chance of a GSage.

Anyway, I'll make a more detailed post about this soon.

[Thoth]

The game treats the 20% penalty as a 0.8 multiplier, so 2 * 0.8 = 1.6 --> 1

[Molach]

The rest of the world hopefully also treats loss of 20% as same as multiply with 0.8

The rounding down is indeed problematic with all the -% hammers in FFH. If there was a way to keep track of lost hammers instead, would be much better. In this case, first turn (1.6) 》gain 1 hammer. Next turn (1.6 + 0.6 surplus) 》gain 2. Everytime surplus rouned off hammers add up to 1 or more you get that hammer.

Also nationhood, if you make 9 hpt you gain nothing building a unit, but overflow cuts away a hammer - so the +hammer-for-unit-civic is worse than a generic one when building units..

I guess it is hard to mod in, or it would have been added already..guess bts didn't see the need

[Qgqqqqq]

I'm pretty sure it's not too hard - it just requires setting things up so they're calculated to a decimal (I don't know where it is but I've heard people talk about it).

[Ichabod]

I don't have a problem with no decimals in hammers, it keeps things simple. But I think that design choice resulted in the avoidance of any sort of production penalty as another design choice, since it results in frustrating situations like the one above. Same reason why, if I recall correctly, BTS has no production bonus that is less than 25%, otherwise you get the frustrating situations like the one Molach described about nationhood. In EitB, I'd probably just get rid of the penalties from Apprenticeship and Pacifism (find another one to Pacifism, most likely), probably the bonus from Nationhood too, and I'd improve some of the other bonuses to 25% (military state, command post). It's way simpler than messing with how the production works (like adding decimals would do).

My take on it, at least.

Update to come later today, I think. I played some uneventful turns (and one eventful one! - yes, this pun again) during the weekend, but was too busy and/or lazy to report them.

[Ichabod]

Turns 11 to 14



I sent the scout to pick up the Healing Salve, so first couple of turns had no interesting news on the scouting department. Probably not going to be of any use, but perhaps it can help us pop an extra hut or dungeon… Ah, and that reminds me, I need to build one extra scout during the Hyb rush to explore the west. I bet the land ends a bit after what we explored, but there’s a considerable chance there’ll be lost hut there. Right now, though, we can’t spare our warrior.



Bears are really nasty in FFH. Even with 2 combat promos, I think I’d get ~50% odds attacking it on a desert tile with the defensive penalty (attacking is better, in this case, than defending in a tile with more defensive bonus, since we get a bigger combat advantage by dividing the bear’s strength, 5, than we get by multiplying our strength, 2). Perhaps risking it for a real chance at a Wane was a decent play, now that I think of it (we could get a lot of XP by winning a 50/50 battle), but I just kept exploring.



I actually pressed the explore hotkey by mistake this turn while trying to write some “where the bear isn’t” signs, so the scout ended up in the wrong tile (I preferred the hill 1E).



Lots and lots of desert around. If I spawn Hyborem near the Sidar, people will have a hard time going to my core lands, due to the Burning Sands that will appear there with Hell terrain (only demons can cross Burning Sands). Pretty nice, in a hypothetical kind of way. They would need to come through water or through a small patch of terrain… Wait, would Spring and Sanctify work to clear a path? Perhaps… If that’s the case, it would be trivial to open a path through it. Anyway, not a big advantage, but an advantage nonetheless.

Regarding the scout, this is a pretty dangerous zone, where we have a defensive penalty and can only move one tile per turn… No other thing to do than go forward, though.



Here’s the eventful turn ( ). We have almost no use for gold, though; it won’t help us with science through deficit research, because we’ll stick with one city until the end of the run (so we only start losing gold after building a thousand of warriors while waiting for the last GPro). But this means we have a sort of event fund now: still not enough for the Great Engineer one, I think, and we can’t get the GPro one, but there are a few others, like getting a hunter by spending some gold that could prove to be useful.



This, on the other hand, is a great event. We have a great limitation on production capacity due to no worker techs, and this little forest gives us a lot more option (seriously, I’m not kidding). We had only one 3h tile and two 1f/2h tiles, now we have three 1f/2h. We won’t miss the extra farm, we would never work all the plains farms we can improve anyway. Still haven’t simmed considering it, but we can perhaps get a turn or two out of it, which is a big deal! Another forest growth would be incredible, especially if it grows on one of the plains hills – the extra advantage is that with another forest we’d actually have no unhealthiness at size 7, which is pretty significant.



We’ll finish a farm on the grassland now. No point in improving the floodplain first, since we’ll work both all the turns anyway while growing and the farms give the same +1 food bonus when improved. Minor point, but interest nonetheless.