Freezing the World below Absolute Zero - Illians Succession Game

[Aurorarcher]

Rules and settings:

Settings:
Erebus Continents
Large
Immortal with Increasing Difficulty Challenge
EitB v. 11.1
No Tech Trading
All Unique Features
All victories enabled except Religious (for everyone else)


Opponents:
Clan
Malakim
Svart
Ljo
Kurios
Lanun
Doviello
Calabim

1. We must cast all six rituals, in order. Samhain - The White Hand - The Deepening - Stir from Slumber - The Draw - Ascension. We may only have two conquests before Ascension - one after the White Hand, and one after Stir from Slumber.
2. We must build a Temple of the Hand in every city unless it already contains >50% tundra/snow/ice tiles. May build them in that case but not required
3. We aim to win by Domination, while thwarting any other victory attempts.
4. We've got to build Wilboman at some point.
5. Play as though we were agnostic - no religions!

Roster (and also the playing order):
Aurorarcher
DaveV
Jalepeno
Mardoc
Qgqqqq

Here's the starting position:




Depending on what warrior/scout revel I'd settle either 1S of the silk (where scout is at the moment) or 1SE of silk on the hill.

After moving Scout/Warrior:




A) Settling on the hill gives us:
- Corn + 3 freshwater grassland pre Mining.
- 7 grasshills to mine later + the defensive bonus for the capital
- maximum 23 hpt (palace + center + 7 mines).

B) Settling on the grass gives us:
- Corn + 4 freshwater grassland pre Mining.
- 6 grasshills, no defensive bonus
- max 21 hpt (palace + center + 6 mines + one plains tile)

I think I'm leaning towards A. I like the defensive bonus and the extra mine.

On the other hand our happy is rather high even without any resources (7 with Enchantment mana + CHA) so one extra freshwater early could make sense to choose B, faster growing is what is needed early anyway. It would also give our workers more to do before Mining (other than roading). We do need mining rather early eventually for the silks though.

I think it's basically the defensive bonus + extra mine (A) vs extra farm early (B). For very early game B is better obviously.

Thoughts? Going to play my set of 20 turns later today.

Teching is quite obvious I think: Agri -> Cal -> Crafting -> Mining for the first 4.

[DaveV]

I agree with A for the city site. I don't think we need to worry about the extra farm at B; we'll have +9 food working the corn, grass farms, and silks. (+13 with agrarianism and no aristocracy). With two (!) ruins very near by, defense will be important.

We'll have five forests in either site for +2 health to offset the lack of fresh water bonus. We should be able to connect some health resources about the time we start chopping forests.

[Qgqqqqq]

Yup, A. I think we should try to garrison one or both of those ruins to keep them from popping lizards for a while.

[flugauto]

5 visible lairs. Good luck.

[DaveV]

Yup, A. I think we should try to garrison one or both of those ruins to keep them from popping lizards for a while.

They'll both be well outside our borders. In my experience, that's just asking to be eaten by a wandering griffon (or a lizardman from yet another lair).

[Aurorarcher]

Ok. A rough start, settled like planned.

Found our first neighbour on T2.




Terrible if we piss them off, early Lucian + wolves would just run over our poor capital. I doubt AI does that early though; especially as Mahala loves us 'cause we're both Evil!

Our scout found trouble too early:







Of course the lair spawns 2nd Lizzardman when we're 1t from finishing the farm on Corn .




There's a 10.70% chance that we're dead when you hit the enter first time, Dave. Let's hope we stay on the side of 89.30% .

Some early dotmapping:




Here's the save for you, Dave:

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/69jwkxhb0b70in7...dSave?dl=0

Also note I switched our name to Mrs Freeze as apparently Os-Gabella is a woman (or sort of looks like that).

[DaveV]

Drum roll...




We survived! But, yes, that is two dots on the ruin. So, two turns later:




I promoted to Combat 1. I played till turn 30.




A skeleton is coming to visit.

[DaveV]

Health is worse than I expected: we're only +1 health at size 3. There's probably not much point in growing past size 4, since we'll be losing a foodhammer to unhealth for each pop beyond that size.

Edit: maybe it is worthwhile, to work the silk tiles. Breakeven on food hammers, but +1 commerce.

[Qgqqqqq]

Also note I switched our name to Mrs Freeze as apparently Os-Gabella is a woman (or sort of looks like that).

Os-Gabella's is more than just a woman, she's the first woman, created to be a bride to Nemed, one of the gods who gave up his precept to become the first man. She rebelled, and the argument over what should be done with her precipitated the divide amongst the gods which led to The One abandoning creation (a mortal women was created to replace her, which is why mankind is mortal). She was gifted with true immortality by one of them (Aeron?) but wishes her existence to be undone, and so leads the Sheaim to destroy all of creation in the hope that she perishes alongside it. Currently, she has spent centuries torturing her divine husband as part of experiments to find the key to her own mortality.

Tl;dr: I think we should name her Ms Freeze


Moves look good. Mahala won't attack us with wolves, she'll do it with a hundred-unit stack of warriors. I think she attacks at pleased, too.

I might have gone Crafting->Mining->Calender, but I didn't notice it earlier.

[jalepeno]

No time to get this tonight - will play tomorrow. Sorry for the delay!