[SPOILERS] Mardoc's Magical Mystery Tour

[Qgqqqqq]

I don't understand what you're saying here. Something about mechanics vs. lore? You know lore can change, right?

A) Mechanics: The Sidar have enough boosts along the priest line with the Altar synergy. They (should) never settle Priests, so it has negligible effect anyway. Moreover, late-late-late game, Priests/Great Priests are OP with Altar boosts, so I was reluctant to stack more on.
B) It clashes massively with lore. I don't think this is in dispute. (Also, lore can't change per se. I'm happy to override it for balance, and to supplement it within the spirit of the existing for flavor reasons, but not change it.)

There's not a vs. going on here. The concession was to the fact that the Sidar are/were underpowered, and implicitly discouraged from going Altar by the bonuses to other specialists. So they got a priest boost, even though I was very reluctant to do so.

Sidar image? What does being good at combat have to do with that? If the trait had another name, like Defender, but did the same thing (made your defenders more effective at their job) would you object?

No it would not. The clash is in the name. (The effect, also, is in the name though. This isn't DEF, and it doesn't pretend to be.)

But that's not nothing. The Sidar are patently not-aggressive, being virtually invisible and only striking out stealthily and secretly. That's almost their thing.

And this does affect judgement. When tossing up new traits for Ethne/Enion Logos with Bob, AGG was rejected out of hand. Where it is not necessary to do so, the lore, theme and feel of the civilization are influential factors in evaluating changes. The mechanical effect is not nothing, but it is not the only thing. When looking at Os-Gabella, PHI, FIN, and so on where all traits which lost some momentum because of lack of compatability. It was a factor to taking CRE from Averax. And so on.

[Mardoc]

A) Mechanics: The Sidar have enough boosts along the priest line with the Altar synergy. They (should) never settle Priests, so it has negligible effect anyway. Moreover, late-late-late game, Priests/Great Priests are OP with Altar boosts, so I was reluctant to stack more on.

If it's negligible, then you shouldn't object to doing it for symmetry's sake .

If someone has most of an Altar built, and they delay victory for the sake of a few hammers...well, I don't know I'd object to boosting the option.

But whatever. You're right that it's unlikely to ever come up. And if it does, 1 gpt won't be significant. I'm mostly commenting because of a smidge of OCD (which might be common among civ players). So I'll stop arguing .

B) It clashes massively with lore. I don't think this is in dispute. (Also, lore can't change per se. I'm happy to override it for balance, and to supplement it within the spirit of the existing for flavor reasons, but not change it.)

I guess I haven't read the lore that much. Didn't realize Sidar objected to the religions.

You realize I'm almost certainly picking up Octopus Overlords this game? Regardless of the lore, I think we need the oceanic collateral, and it makes a handy culture source too.

I vaguely have the impression that Torusland does not place mana nodes. Perhaps my scouting will prove me wrong (or perhaps Bob added some), but regardless I'd rather plan on priests, for now anyway. Besides, waterwalking goes well with divided souls - can either hit from the far side of a strait, or attack off boats without the amphib penalty.

As long as distance isn't so much as to make conquest unprofitable, I do think *someone* will be vulnerable to a Hawk-scouted alpha strike of galleys loaded with DS's and Cultists. Ideally we could hit Jalepeno that way and get both the cove econ and the Wane econ, together . Plus he's more likely than average to have coastal (and hence vulnerable) cities. The main objection is that he's also the most likely to have a military and navy that could stop us. More likely, it will be Aurorarcher or DaveV...or else 'Mardoc, finish settling your own land before you go conquering'. A lot depends on just how well we do at attracting and killing barbs to make our Wanes.

[Mardoc]

Read some of the threads in recent EitB games, DaveV and Jalepeno and a little bit of Aurorarcher. And, well, it pretty well confirms my impressions: they're all competent players who won't make the obvious mistakes.
PBEM 43 spoilers

Sadly, Jalepeno learned from his Amurite adventure and went with Falamar this time so I can't even expect to outgrow him. Both DaveV and Jalepeno are willing to dogpile, at least in principle (in practice, they focused inward a bit too much to get their dogpile timing right).

Aurorarcher seems to be the only one of us who sims, which might make up a bit for having Dain instead of a more economic leader. Last game it appears he popped a GPro from a lair around T10, to explain part of his dominance there - but, well, he's also got the management chops to exploit it properly, and the aggression he needed to convert a lead to a win. Reminds me more of Thoth PBEM3 than anything, and we know how Thoth turned out.

Molach's been more of a BtS player, I think. He might not realize just how much he can do with those Puppets. Not the way to bet, though

So, all in all...I'd better be right about getting lots of Wanes this game! If we do get the Wanes to make Sidar the right choice...then we can win this, but no one is going to roll over for us.

[Mardoc]

Also, I realized a severe weakness in choosing Sandalphon instead of Shekinah: Form of the Titan will be well-contested. Potent adepts shouldn't have too much trouble hitting 26XP, while regular adepts probably can't (I don't remember if the adept cap is 20 or 30, but in either case it's not happening without Potent). Er, not passively, anyway - I guess Adepts can fight barbs if the XP is the bottleneck. If we want the Titan (and I think we do!) then we need to beat everyone to the tech, and to copper, and *not* wane all our barb fighters. Going to be an interesting question how to do A without doing B .

I think this means that Divided Souls will just have to wait. First priority is to get worker techs...but after that we need to get to Bronze and spam out a bunch of warriors, who sweep the badlands for experience. And get our copper hooked, and get ourselves up to Warfare.

[Qgqqqqq]

Torusland does place mana (and cotton etc.).

For Form of the Titan, you simply have to have reached a level 6 unit, not still have him/her around.

[Mardoc]

Torusland does place mana (and cotton etc.).

I was confident in cotton, it's a BtS resource. For that matter, I'm confident mithril appears. It was just mana that I doubted.

For Form of the Titan, you simply have to have reached a level 6 unit, not still have him/her around.

Yes, but waning them immediately upon level 5 still would prevent the unlock. If I didn't care about Titan, I'd want to boost the snowball ASAP and put the next 9 XP toward another wane. And we shouldn't rely on just one unit to make the level 6 trek, in case it loses the last fight.

It probably depends on the barb flowrate. If we get wanables well before Warfare, and barbs are coming steadily, we can afford to wane the first couple. If not, got to save them for Titan. It'll be a rich-get-richer effect - if the barbs are plentiful, we will be able to both speed our tech rate with wanes and be confident in unlocking Titan. If they're not...then we'll both be desperate for the Titan XP and have trouble getting it

[Mardoc]

Turn 2 is in the books! Probably doesn't get from Jalepeno before the euros are in bed, but maybe there's a chance.

I thought about keeping the warrior at home, but decided to risk scouting with him now that he has an enchanted blade. I'm pretty sure that even animals can't come until T5, and warriors a bit after that. I know lair spawn can come any turn now, but we don't have lairs. And against most things, a fortified adept will at least have odds.

I do want to know what's by the gold, that seems to be our most likely 2nd city. Plus, we can't start collecting XP if we huddle our units inside our borders. Post worker, we can make a couple-few more warriors and keep one home.



Demographics got worse, presumably Molach added an Inspiration to the Oasis and a prereq tech.



I'm pretty sure everyone picked an economic spell. We'd better get lucky with some Wanes, because we're going to need the boost.

[Mardoc]

And the PYFT rating resumes! Second turn of the evening.

Turns out I was very wrong to fear being manaless.

[Mardoc]

Apparently that first two turns in 48 hours was, indeed, the slow part

Also, we started the turn with a nice event:


And found nice new stuff to the east. Hunting is going to be both an economic and a military tech, it seems. And Dereptus will pay back handsomely.

[Mardoc]

Also, just in case:

wane