[NO PLAYERS] Lurk with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight

[Bobchillingworth]

Large image to ward off misclicks:

[Bobchillingworth]

Current thoughts about how to approach the map:



Def. intending to give players views of their starting land before they pick leaders & spells. Initial plan is to give everyone a desert oasis tile, either desert incense or desert hill gold, one food & one lux calendar resources under jungle, and then a single untainted grain. Basically making Fire 1 and Water 1 viable; otherwise everyone is just going to pick from one of Mind / Meta / Death / Body / Enchantment / Ice (although Ice isn't too amazing if your target has access to Body).


In any event I imagine Amurities will be an obvious first pick for most people, due to their having wonderful starting mana and Arcane on both leaders. Meta is just ridiculously good for any civ, and Dain can push out a fast Sage w/ Philo while Woman Leader could manage a rush if she takes Enchantment (to combine with starting with Body and Meta). Auric w/ Body is fairly obvious from a rush perspective as well.


Alternatively, just go Charadon, take Enchantment or Meta (I think the Doviello start with Body?) and then murder someone(s). Going to be really tough to balance around that, I probably won't even try. Hub might mitigate the risk of the game ending really early, idk. I think they're making a mistake not going with Rainforest.



Completely worthless mana will be Shadow / Air / Life / Spirit / Law / Sun. Entropy, Chaos, Earth and Nature will be close to useless (Entropy 1 might be my favorite spell in the game, but none of the available civs start with it and it's in no way worth taking over something like Enchantment). Actually, Death is pretty iffy too with only one spell. Meta is better for scouting, and Enchantment, Body and Ice probably have more rush utility. The poor Ljo and Svarts get it pretty rough with a single spell, although Amelanchier can make good use of Mind 1. Hippus too, neither of the Civ's starting mana will be of much help and anyone wanting to rush with Tasunke will be forced to choose between speed, scouting and strength.


Two main approaches are obvious; keep the Adept at home and focus on terraforming and ideally Sage generation / research via Mind 1, or try to align civ, leader and spell to load as many combat boosts as possible on hasted Warriors (or even Axes).



Haven't started on the map yet, won't start until they actually decide on a script, but open to thoughts / suggestions at any point.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hmm, hadn't known the map dimensions when I wrote the above. Rushing pre t2 will be out for sure, this map is going to be really large for five players. I hope they can hold themselves to a good PYFT standard.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hehe, the angst over what spells to take is exactly what I was hoping for. I think Auro may have missed that water will also give +1 hammer if he settles in place, though.


Now that I think about it, Sandalphon with Mind 1 will be really strong. Early (boosted!) great sage, then possibly a second (also boosted!) by waning the adept, and Enchantment mana to give warriors an edge on farming barbs for exp. Plus the map geography will be very friendly toward abusing severed souls.

[Bobchillingworth]

I am way too proud of how my capital mana puzzle has played out


Also admitting that I am charmed to no end by four of the players retaining their post-apocalyptic titles while Mardoc is "The Music Man".

[Miguelito]

Looking at Dave... if mardoc had picked necro, could he get wanable skeletons now ?

[Bobchillingworth]

Nah, you can't wane non-living units, probably to prevent exactly that. Can't remember if Tigers can be waned or not.

[Tasunke]

Sheaim starts with Death/Fire/Cha0s

with Nox Noctis + AV shrine you get Entropy and Shadow ... which is enough for the Tower of Necromancy.

----> He could go for an extra death node ... to get 6 str spectres.

Or he could go for something else ... but then he runs the risk of someone else getting one of said two holy cities. But that's only if he is looking for Tower of Necromancy.

[Dreylin]

Sheaim starts with Death/Fire/Cha0s

with Nox Noctis + AV shrine you get Entropy and Shadow ... which is enough for the Tower of Necromancy.

----> He could go for an extra death node ... to get 6 str spectres.

Or he could go for something else ... but then he runs the risk of someone else getting one of said two holy cities. But that's only if he is looking for Tower of Necromancy.

Erm, if the goal is Tower of Necromancy, wouldn't it be infinitely simpler to just convert 2 mana nodes to Entropy and Shadow, rather than research a bunch of extra tech and generate 2 Great People to build the Shrines!?!?

[Tasunke]

Leading into my next question ... wasn't each person only given one mana node?

However, I guess going Metamagic, then Conquering a player's capital, and then going Shadow/Entropy could work.