Your name is in the mouth of others, be sure it has teeth: a Tale of Mice & Centaurs

[Ventessel]

Mardoc, I definitely appreciate your patience and help here, that strategy link is just what I was looking for.

With the link settings, do you have Dropbox Pro? Because I am unable to edit the link settings and have been messing around for quite a while trying to figure out how to get the alternate link type. Are you getting the link from the desktop client?

[Kragroth]

Why don't you just use Imgur? http://imgur.com/

Nice and easy. Although if your picture is too big, you'll want to replace the "img" tags with "screenshot" ones.

[Ventessel]

Why don't you just use Imgur? http://imgur.com/

Nice and easy. Although if your picture is too big, you'll want to replace the "img" tags with "screenshot" ones.

YEAH! That was easy. Turn update edited to actually include the screenshots now.

[Mardoc]

Mardoc, I definitely appreciate your patience and help here, that strategy link is just what I was looking for.

Always glad to be helpful . It helps that you've been asking the sorts of questions lurkers are allowed to answer, of course (not 'what should I do', but rather 'how does this work?').

With the link settings, do you have Dropbox Pro? Because I am unable to edit the link settings and have been messing around for quite a while trying to figure out how to get the alternate link type. Are you getting the link from the desktop client?

No, I have Basic. Been using the webclient recently; IIRC when I had the desktop client I had to right click on a file in the public folder, and there was a public link option.

But if you'd rather use Imgur, that's fine too. Except that I can't help you with anything there as I haven't used it.

[Ventessel]

Mardoc, I definitely appreciate your patience and help here, that strategy link is just what I was looking for.

Always glad to be helpful . It helps that you've been asking the sorts of questions lurkers are allowed to answer, of course (not 'what should I do', but rather 'how does this work?').

With the link settings, do you have Dropbox Pro? Because I am unable to edit the link settings and have been messing around for quite a while trying to figure out how to get the alternate link type. Are you getting the link from the desktop client?

No, I have Basic. Been using the webclient recently; IIRC when I had the desktop client I had to right click on a file in the public folder, and there was a public link option.

But if you'd rather use Imgur, that's fine too. Except that I can't help you with anything there as I haven't used it.

Well, for the time being Dropbox is perplexing me and Imgur seems to have worked so I'll stick with that. I should have known, my little sister uses Imgur so it must be software that caters to the lowest common denominator... which it would seem now includes me, haha.

[Ventessel]

No update for Turn 1, I was travelling and very tight on time. I'll roll out a larger post tomorrow evening detailing the last two turns and my initial strategic plan/short term objectives given the terrain and the fact that I ended up with the Kurios (not going to lie, my game plan had been for the Amurites, but I do really enjoy the Kurios gameplay as well).

[Ventessel]

Not much action this turn. The scout has been rechristened, in a manner more suited to his shady rodent nature, to "Padan Fain". Rather absent-mindedly, I forgot to take a screenshot with the interface pulled up after I changed his name.


Here's an overview of the area with the grid turned on, I'm planning to have the scout follow the river to the south in search of a suitable site for Super City #2. The area around Caemlyn looks very good, lots of riverside tiles, a decent amount of hills in each culture ring. The only downside is the single desert tile I pick up in the far NE, the mountain in the SE, and the 3 coastal tiles that will never amount to very much.



One of my early goals will be to start laying down cottages (which requires Education - need to include that in the tech plan) so that I'll get enclaves (the Kurio unique upgrade from Towns) ASAP.

Later on this evening I will work up a tech plan and detail probable build order after the worker finishes. I switched tech from Calendar to Animal Husbandry because I realized it would be more valuable in the short run to improve the 2 food resources near the capital than to revolt into Agrarianism when I don't even have any farms (nor plan to build many given the food resources I have available.)

[Ventessel]

Turn 3 Update

Here are the projected movements for Padan Fain and the as-yet-unnamed Warrior (scrawled crudely in purple), as well as two potential sites for Super City #2 depending on the terrain revealed to the South. They would scoop up all the the river valley tiles and nab the sheep out to the west of Caemlyn.


Speaking of this river...it's seriously weird. It begins in a plains tile and goes straight to the coast. Extremely unnatural.


At least it kinda goes through a valley south of Caemlyn, but it still appears to originate from nowhere in particular...

There appears to be a natural chokepoint of some kind out to the east, and some unpleasant tundra blah terrain to the west. After Caemlyn builds that worker I will train up a scout and send him out to the east. Hopefully no barbarian warrior (or worse, an enemy scout) appears on the tile 3E of Caemlyn because my warrior is a minimum 4 turns from home... that would be a brief game

I've been behind on my demographics analysis lately, so here's a big info dump:

turn 1

turn 2

turn 3


Right off the bat, it appears that my rival best for Mfg (Dreylin) has dropped from 8 to 7 to 4 hammers, accumulating a total of 26h (8 + 7 + 7 + 4) although it is possible that this turn someone else took the rival best by either working two hills or a forested hill which would slightly reduce my estimated hammers for Dreylin. At the same time, rival best Crop Yield rose to 9.

No score changes or adjustments to soldier count, so no units have yet been produced (although one could still be knocked out this turn, since I'm in the middle of the turn order these numbers are going to be a bit murky at times).

So what is Dreylin doing? A worker is 50h on quick (75h * .67 = 50.25h) so he's either halfway to a worker or he's laid in some production towards a warrior and then switched over to build out something else... perhaps he's trying to avoid showing an immediate increase in soldier count? That doesn't really make a lot of sense, since it's unlikely he's met any neighbors and having cast his worldspell he has clearly painted himself as a target by moving so aggressively into the lead.

A possibility is that he's partially built a granary (67h on quick) and is trying to time city growth with the completion of the granary. Does anyone know where I can find the numbers for city growth from size 3 to 4? He would currently be about 10 turns away from finishing the granary... does that make sense as a move? I don't really know why he wouldn't be building a worker, however. So in all likelihood, he's halfway to his first worker.

Looking at land area (and discounting my earlier crack-addled theory of a peninsula city) it looks like rival best is tied with me at 20k (so a fully inland city) and then the rival worst is 17k (picked up 3 coastal tiles in his second culture ring, so founded 1 tile inland) leaving 38k to divide between the middle two. One possibility (which seems quite likely) is that there's a third 20k city founded 2+ tiles inland, and another player picked up two coastal tiles in their second culture ring. Otherwise they're both at 19k which seems an unlikely coincidence.

This means a couple things. For starters, all my opponents are all at least moderately competent. No coastal cities founded yet, which does mean that there is unlikely to be much drive for the fishing line of the tech tree (leaving open the possibility of scooping up Octopus Overlords slightly later on, and maybe a Great Lighthouse (does anyone know if the Kurio settlements get trade routes? because that would be sweet).

And speaking of the tech tree:

My research path is planned as Animal Husbandry -> Crafting -> Mining -> Archery
which accomplishes a few things. It gets me archers to defend my first cities, it powers up my workers for chopping those forests around me, and it opens up mines to get me some hammers since I am currently DFL for Mfg.

And what techs do my rivals have? Let's ask the experts.

The Royal Kuriotate Arcanist and the head of the Caemlyn Alchemists' Guild are hard at work, currently deciphering the secrets of Animals, and their Husbands. There is a disturbing trend of absentee fathers and broken families in the sheep and pig herds outside the capitol, leading to bovine delinquents and roving gangs of porcine malcontents. This research into their Husbandry may prove critical in solving this social crisis before it spirals out of control.

In between daring experiments, they've delivered the following report to the throne on our adversaries' obscure and esoteric knowledge:
Calabim (Dreylin) - Exploration
Svartalfar (Dave) - Agriculture (we understand this technology)
Amurites (jalapeno) - Ancient Chants (ummmm... this? our researchers are baffled.)
Khazad (Aurorarcher) - Crafting (apparently this means craft beers, not arts and crafts)

So, Dreylin and jalapeno have basically nothing for their workers to do until they discover some techs. Dave is in the same boat I am, able to build farms (which are awesome in the early game, although I don't plan on running Agristocracy, which is the famed combination of Aristocracy for -1f/+2c on farms and Agrarianism for +1f/-1h on farms. Smack that down on an irrigated gl and you've got 3f/2c, if it's riverside 3f/3c, once you get sanitation that becomes 4f/3c... damn)

The Khazad can hook up early wines if they get exploration, so I'll be keeping a loose eye on the approval ratings to see if they jump up. The Kurios people will unfortunately not be building roads for quite some time, since I have those three food resources right there to improve and work. Once they're upgraded, I'll get to size 3 and start in on the first settler, ideally having several warriors/scouts out for defense and fogbusting.

Something which I'm rather keen to do is start leveraging my philosophical trait ASAP (combined with the pacifism civic), which would require teching Mysticism to build Elder Councils to run sage specialists. So after my first settler is built I will likely revolt into Agrarianism and focus on accumulating some GPP.

Anyways, that's all for now.

[Ventessel]

Turn 4: Not much to report. Units explored, found silks in the south and wines in the west as shown below.


No change in the demographics. All is quiet on the western front.

[Ventessel]

I don't know what's going on in Dreylin's thread, but there sure is a lively discussion over there. He's definitely plotting something...

I've realized that it's impossible for him to have been building a granary since the only tech he has is exploration. I'm almost certain now that it's a worker. It occurred to me that he may have changed over to work a food tile with higher yield after his borders popped in order to finish the worker faster, since his city is already size 3.