[SPOILER] superjm is Cassiel - Since When Have Heroes Ever Needed Plans?

[superjm]

Who decided to let the Erebus equivalent of an edgy Reddit atheist lead a magical army anyway?  

Whatever, never mind that, wandering eyes begone.

[superjm]

So let's see what we've got here before turn updates proper.

Dave is Kandros Fir of the Khazad. To be honest, I never really clicked with the Khazad's playstyle as hoarding tons of gold seems to be the opposite of how you should play Civ, but maybe that's just my inexperience talking. AGG is really good, FIN not so much, and dwarves have all the things dwarves are good at so it seems like a solid pick.

Auroracher is Tebryn Arbandi of the Sheaim. Good news is no AGG zombies. Bad news is supercharged Mobius Witches. Auro sure loves his magic it seems. Still, a complete lack of any economic bonuses whatsoever does seem to pigeonhole him into a very linear strategy.

mackoti is Sandlophon of the Sidar. All I can hope is that he doesn't get early Shades. And that he's not close to me. And that he doesn't just win the game outright before we all have a chance to do anything.

Mr. Cairo is Arendel Phaedra of the Ljosafar. Honestly I never liked Ljosofar as much as the Svartalfar but that's just personal preference. Elven economy is still not to be reckoned with and they benefit from having one of the easiest to build Heroes in the game and an incredibly annoying WS. And SPI allows Cairo to make better use of FoL priests than most.

As for me, I'm playing Cassiel of the Grigori. Actually my first time seriously using this Civ, which means I'm definitely going to screw things up. Seems a bit tricky to play since Adventurers are so good but spawning them means foregoing heavy investment into other Great People, or vice versa. Plus AGN cutting me off from any useful religious stuff. ADA is really good though, especially since I start with IND which should benefit my early game greatly if I play it smartly.

Let's hope I have a better showing this time, I feel like I've learned a lot from my previous games about how EITB MP is paced, but there's some stiff competition to worry about.

[superjm]

And with that out of the way, let's begin. Same format as last time, one image and one or more sentences per turn. Hopefully with frequent larger updates this time.

T1



Interesting start, tons of Calendar resources and exactly zero farm resources plus a gold tile. 6 turns of the gold plus 2 turns of the forest is an 8 turn worker exactly, thanks IND!

[superjm]

T2



Four(!) happiness resources within 3 rings of the cap plus the Palace Enchantment mana means potentially 10 pop cities very early on without much tech investment. I presume the other players have similarly strong starts so we all might end up snowballing fairly early in this one.

[superjm]

T3


Our good core land seems to be surrounded by a whole lot of garbage jungle on all sides which presents a problem for even our forest-loving elves. Early Bronze Working is definitely going to be a must for everyone in this game I reckon.

T4


Agri->Mining for the gold is tempting, but in the end, especially with this capital, Agri-Calendar is the way to go as usual.

T5


Curiously, I'm the only person with one lake in their capital BFC, the rest have at least two. Also it seems everyone else is working max foodhammers, the extra rival GNP almost certainly being Arendel's CRE trait in action.

T6


Speaking of elves, we meet Mr. Cairo alarmingly early. I don't expect that anyone in this game will pursue aggressive posturing on our caps this early in the game cause that's no fun, but I'm still hoping he doesn't beeline my city right away before my starting warrior circles back to hold the fort.

[superjm]

T7


First gold event of the game, I end up rolling a nice 46 to start off with

T8


My first bit of bad luck as the winter event fires and tundrafies my Pig tile. Given that this isn't a particularly food rich start that's a bad sign, though it'd probably be a while till AH anyway. I forget, does event-induced tundra revert eventually?

T9


I queue up a warrior after the worker finishes (who is improving the flood plains) and work the gold for more commerce and to make up for the Pacifism deficit, but I'm really thinking that I should have just grown here or just started on a second worker immediately.  I guess I was a bit apprehensive of Cairo's scout lurking nearby and possibly causing problems.

T10


I find Cairo's capital past the . A banana and a cotton visible so it does appear like we've all got similar starts, barring further investigation.

T11


As expected, Cairo's scout is in my area now and will be at my doorstep by next turn.

T12


I switch off the near-completed warrior to start a second worker, whose completion will, barring miscalculation, coincide exactly with the completion of Calendar. I can then double revolt to Religion-Agrarianism and be off from there.

[Thoth]

The tundra reverts after 20? turns. It's been awhile so I don't remember the exact number of turns but it will revert in time.

[superjm]

We're on T32 right now, so I do have a backlog to get through over the next day or two. Turns have been going on so fast though, which is nice.

T13


Mr Cairo's borders pop again (gotta love CRE), forcing me to move westward to avoid the tiger, unfortunate as I wanted to explore Cairo's capital area some more.

T14


I'd be miffed that I was just short of the 50 gold for the free prophet if it weren't an Evil-only event. I should be mindful though of keeping an event fund, I know that's something a lot of lurkers harp on during these games and I tend to forget about it if I'm not careful.

T15


Moving away from the tiger turns out to be a fool's errand as my scout is immediately brought down by a gorilla. This jungle is going to be a pain in the neck to deal with with all the 4 strength 2 move tigers and gorillas roaming around with zero visibility.

T16


Groo the Wanderer was born last turn and I immediately turn it into a warrior to hopefully have a strong and stout scouting unit that will actually survive past all this jungle. Gonna be a bit of waiting though for him to get the experience needed. Keeping him unpromoted until I could get to better units was considered but I figured I'd be able to generate enough Adventurers that it wouldn't be a huge deal.

T17


The timing aligns perfectly as I had expected it to, and I'll have a second worker, Calendar, and this fresh water farm done all in three turns just in time to start on the banana and dyes and revolt into Agrarianism/Religion.

T18


Looks like I'm the only player who went for the super aggressive double worker build at size 1. I'm not super confident this was the right play to make but I figure that I won't be able to do much with my one worker anyway until Calendar is done and when that tech IS finished, I have a lot of stuff to do in my capital to get everything online. I'd like to have 4 plantations, 4 farms online and my gold mine at least started by the time I reach size 8 in the cap and I'm pretty sure doing all that with one worker isn't possible.

[superjm]

T19


And of course the moment I send my starting warrior back into the wilderness it immediately gets eaten by a spider. Yeah, scouting is not going to happen any time soon at this rate, it's pretty much going to be all Groo once he gets well-promoted enough until I get better units or I can afford just chucking scouts into the darkness. Unfortunate as I really need some vision beyond this jungle to know how the heck I'm going to dotmap.

T20


Is there any situation in this game where your first move shouldn't be revolting into Agrarianism as soon as humanly possible, short of starting with zero fresh water? I don't think there is.

T21


With Agrarianism in and Pacifism out my capital is finally growing and I can finally make units without wasting hammers. I also lay out the plan for my workers here, getting the dyes and farms up to keep up with cap growth and then circling around to improve the second banana, cotton, sugar, and then finally the gold.

T22


Mr. Cairo also revolted to Agrarianism last turn. Must be nice being SPI

T23


Still unsure about how I want to lay my dotmap but I know for sure that on top of the Sugar is where I want my next city to be. It shares plenty of capital resources and hills and doesn't need immediate chopping to be useful unlike almost anywhere else.

T24-T25


The amount of improved food is more than enough to sustain two-turn growth for several pop. I had expected to be able to improve the cotton and gold before hitting the happy cap but with my current plan it looks like even two workers will be too slow for that, not that I'm complaining much. Also nothing happens on T25 worth mentioning.

T26


I even have enough food that I could afford to work the improved dyes right away to catapult my science rate while still maintaining two-turn growth growing into the other farms. I'm starting to think the two-worker start was the right move here though, given that I'm too lazy to hardcore sim it out (I did that in my first BTS PBEM game ages ago, it's effective but excruciating), I can't say that with any certainty.

[Miguelito]

So,up to anything heroic?