Aurorarcher plays again

[Aurorarcher]

Happy to see a new game starting.

[naufragar]

Here is your start. Fog-gazing is dangerous magic.  In case it's not clear, the tile the settler is on is a plains hill.

Here are your pick options. Let me know if you'll play as one of these or want three new choices.
    Amurites-Valledia
    Khazad-Arturus Thorne
    Ljosalfar-Amelanchier

[Aurorarcher]

Thanks, nauf!

Well, that start looks pretty commerce poor...

I'll take Khazad.

[Aurorarcher]

So now that we know the picks I can give some early thoughts of them.

DaveV
Kuriotates-Cardith Lorda (PHI/EXP/ADA)

Map size is SMALL but still ~200 tiles per player. I think that means then 3 mega cities. The number of mega cities decreases to 2 with very small maps like tiny or duel if I recall correctly. Very big contender for wonders.


mackoti
Luchuirp-Beeri Bawl (IND/FIN)

Another dwarf around And way better World Spell! And IND! Dang! On the positive side of it: Golems suck.


Miguelito
Svartalfar-Volanna (AGG/CRE)

This is one of those "don't be next to me" civs. Scary but I hope my +20% defense for each city makes me less likely a target early.


Aurorarcher
Khazad-Arturus Thorne (IND/ORG/ING)

Wonders? Sure. Play with vaults? Sure. Builder type of a leader for sure. I don't usually do that too much though so who knows...


Mr. Cairo
Sidar-Shekinah (CRE/ARC)

I think the weakest traits of all 5 of us. Sidar is of course scary when played right but this trait pairing doesn't suit that well when you really want to play with Divided Souls + Ghosts. On the other hand he might be able to produce some Wanes using ARC. But waning 17 xp adepts/mages just doesn't feel great...

[Aurorarcher]

I've wanted to report but haven't had much time. Trying to change that because I'm sure you guys want to see the game from my side as well. Will post more pics later and analyse my game and other players' play with the info I have so far.

But anyway, I found RoK T56. Money religion suits work well with vaults + I don't have to worry about happy penalties if I spend too much money. I did prioritise RoK very high, even slowed expanding a bit and used my WS for extra 125g. I figured at that point that Dave or mack might also be interested in to grab it as well.

I did one stupid thing though. On T57 I immediately revolted to RoK becuase I thought I wouldn't get the money benefit otherwise (I was wrong, just didn't remember). I also still need to revolt to GK. So that is two turns of revolt in a row.

The map so far looks very interesting! I've had fun scouting. More on that later with pics.

[Aurorarcher]

Here I fired my WS (t49). I actually got 150g. This allowed me to run 100% science without getting angry from vaults. Less than 50g per city means +1 unhappy. Less than 25g per city means +2 unhappy.



You can see the war declaration from Mig. He killed my warrior and offered peace afterwards. My warriors was down to like 30 hp so I can easily understand it and I already had 2 promotions too. Still... I won't forget! He was kind of allowing me to scout his area earlier though.

I got the holy city to my 3rd city (+3 gold). I settled my 3rd city on Ivory for +2h plant. I won't research Hunting any time soon + the city can use food from cap very well.



I needed culture here already so this was very fortunate. I had already invested 12h in monument in case the holy city would've gotten to my 2nd city.

Here you can see the two people I have met. Cairo and Mig.



Both fairly far away from me. Actually, the map size has surprised me a bit. I'm about 17 tiles away from Mig's cap and there's ton of slow terrain (jungle) between us. I don't know where Cairo's cap is but the distance seems similar if not even longer. Also here you can see kind of the middle section between us three.

Here is my land and future city spots.



The one in the north with Fish and Clam is the one I'll claim next. Then probably the one in the south-west with Fish + Corn. Then Wheat + Pigs.

Demos as of T58 when I just revolted to God King.



Kind of in the middle right now. These numbers will go up quite a bit in a few turns.

So how have everyone been doing. I haven't tracked scores, techs or anything this time so some of this will be pure guessing based on scores and other info I have available. These will be in score order from top to bottom.

mack: 325 points. Has been leading score most of the game. I believe he has at least 4 cities at this point. Maybe even 5. Likely tech leading too with Dave. Strong start as expected. Is not CRE so most of the score is from real stuff (not land points). Though with a lot of cities he is also getting bunch of land points but not nearly as much as the other culture guys. He is FIN so most likely has Festivals. Should be heading from Drama Bard if he sees a chance there. Dave might try that too.

Mig: 272 points. He is CRE so a lot of land points. Has 3 cities and the 3rd was settled T52 (mine was T55). He moved his cap a lot T1 and got gems to his cap. Is in GK and is leading proudction with 50 hpt. Similar GNP to me but there's at least 6 from CRE. He has at least one tech that I don't: Animal Husbandry. Hopefully not grabbing too many of those annoying Griffons to attack me. Decent start.

Dave: 264 points. Fired Legends T52 (so got his 3rd city there). Also birthed GS T54 (I think) and I saw some very high GNP earlier, it was over 70. Also Dave built the 3 Giants ritual T56. I assume he is mack's neighbour (that is good for me). Has by far the most land with his 3 super culture cities (99 land tiles). That's more than double of my empire. His score will go very high on T72 when the land points kick in. Has played the game as expected, good Kuriotates game.

Me: 260 points. I have played okay start. Not great but not terrible either. My 2nd city was all about that gold mine + silk to speed up research. Now I need to expand faster and catch up with mack. I am kind of happy being behind and slowly building tough so not that I need to hurry too much. I now have a lot of happiness to grow my cities even over size 10 while I think others are capped around 8 happy at the moment.

Cairo: 204 points. Not too many points being CRE. From power graph I can see he has built a lot of warriors! He is certainly hunting for shades but apparently it has not worked too well so far. Has 3 cities but only settled his 3rd city T58. Is behind in GNP. I believe he got stuck too much with trying to get warriors fast to 17 xp. I can see he has lost some warriors too, probably gambling with lower odd attacks which I think is not the worst idea. He has the top power 42k. That could be 10 warriors. I have 5. 10 warriors cost quite a lot of money every turn, that slows research, etc. and the snowball just doesn't want to get rolling... unless. Unless he manages to get shades quickly.

[Aurorarcher]

It's been only 6 turns or so and the top power is up to 74k (was only 42k 6t ago). And that is not Cairo/Mig. So it must be either Mack or Dave. Mack also fired his WS but haven't finished any wonders just yet (EDIT: oops I forgot you can't rush building with them of course ), is he going to use those Golden Hammers for +1 attack strength? Hopefully there's a war or potential war between Dave and Mack. And by that I mean and a war that leads to nowhere. They can't be too close though if the distances are similar to my neighbours so I'm not sure there's anything going on. Actually I think he wants to settle them (it's way better move). I think he wants to move them all into one city. It's possible but not easy.

Anyway, I just finished AH and got my 4th city settled. I also found Mig's super scout very close to my borders...



I wonder if he's up to anything annoying. Right now he is so injured so I doubt it but gotta be careful...

Also Horses! But... right under my 2nd city. So useless considering the extra hammers.



Next I'm thinking Education and probably Sailing. I'm trying to avoid BW for now (usually that's not smart).

[Aurorarcher]

Mig's scout found me.



He already has HBR. The problem here is. I can't run away and he'll kill me almost certainly with that C3 strength.

Closer to home he has another super scout...



First I hopped over here. Can you guess how? I have a settler nearby too, I'm trying to settle to the x spot. I also set a small trap here if he'll try to kill my warrior.



Then I attacked his C3 scout in the north. His scout being on defense I got 33,8% odds to win. I figured that's way better than I am getting defending (didn't check but I think I'd only get like 5% on defense). And I won that attack! Got 8 xp.

[Aurorarcher]

He fell to the trap.

So here we go.



Victory and 4 xp. I offered peace. (He also did before I played) but I had to kill this.

[Aurorarcher]

Some of these pics are like 3-4 turns old but anyway.

This might be the most barb animals I've seen from one unit view.



This part of the map is really hard to go through...



I just hope those Scorpions will be dead before Mig finds them. If he can capture them he can use Scorp's poisoned blade for +1 poison combat for his recon units.

I found Dave and made contact.



Power graph is interesting.



I've lost units because I used some SoKs to hurry Heron Throne. Mig took a barb city fairly close to me (more on that later). Then I checked what traits Dave took with his switch on T73 or so. He was EXP/PHI. Now he is EXP/ARC. So he is building a lot of adepts. He also has birthed at least 2 maybe even 3 (not sure who got the 3rd) Great Sages to bulb his way into mages faster. I'm not sure how far he is already. I think this is a very interesting play with Kurios.

Dave doesn't even have HBR. How do I know? Well, I do know that Mig has HBR and by checking each tech and their known tech bonus to my GNP I can see that only one player has HBR. Two players have KoTE (Dave and Cairo). Considering other techs none has BW.

Here is the barb city that Mig took.



Those units look a bit scary. My units are mostly warriors with 3 strength no promotions... not good. I do have my walls though! I was going to grab Sailing for Lighthouses + I've seen an island. But I switched to BW immediately after seeing this.

Next to turn I settled my city.



I have 3 warriors (one with C1) + 4th coming up so I'm not too scared. Mig moved some of his units up, he'll scout my city next turn by moving to that hill. His culture will take that tile eventually so I'm already planning in my head how to deal with all this...

Also notice mack doing his tricks. Barnaxus born and dead (on purpose). He just wants to build the Shrine of the Champion for +1 free promotion. So now it's obvious, no golem play (he's too smart). I wonder what's his plan. He did find FoL and I know he loves Kithra. But is the idea to stick to FoL? Priests + Tigers? Magic route? I don't know but he's clearly leading and having that GNP of ~200 during GA also helps.

Here's my hero ready to do something. Maybe after BW I can do something to that barb city. I will find it hard to stay peaceful though. I will (for now) if Mig doesn't want to press me. My goodies come a bit later (notice I'm building Mines of Gal-Dur, 11t left). I also got HT. It's in my 5th city Glulynn (the size 3 city in the picture).



Also one very interesting question for any lurkers out there. I've now played 83 turns. Can you guess how many turns of those I've been saving gold?