New EitB succession game

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry been really busy at work, and the hot weather (for Ireland) has had me sleeping strangely so haven't concentrated on the game the last few days.

Looks like a good pair of turnsets played since I last looked. Defensively we're much stronger now with the extra units and the plan is surely where to expand into before planning war.

I'll take a look at the save tomorrow and give my ideas.

Turn order is:

Roster:
1) Me (Just done)
2) Shallow Thought (UP)
3) Bing Xi Liao (on deck)
4) Amicalola - UP
5) Dave V - on deck

[Amicalola]

Looking good! Sorry for the lack of comments, it's assignment season here. I'll take a longer look and play my set tonight after dinner - Brian's ideas beforehand are most surely welcome though.

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry for delay yet again on thoughts, was away earlier today doing a nature walk up the Glen.

On the game, immediate first thoughts are get incense up and running, both of our copies should have turns put into them, so develop the safest one.
We need to expand past three cities, and to do that we need to find good sites, get scouting. And if at all possible get a settler to a site in the west that blocks the Svartalfar from pushing south. We need to hit that land.

In terms of tech, I think Dave's idea of getting some magic up first is a good idea, then go for religious units. If we don't want to go for the Ashen Veil (unless you're role playing they're strictly speaking the best religion) then pick a one that we have good odds on founding and go for it.

Other than that, have fun and do what you think best given the conditions the game throws at you.

[Amicalola]

Alright, it took an extra day but I'm done with my set. And assignment season is over, which means I can start commenting on the ones you guys play! Thanks for the thoughts, Brian; they were very helpful. 

T111 - I move two of our western warriors towards the goblin encampment near our capital. Time to get rid of that. I was told we want mages before a religion so I start research into Knowledge of the Ether. 

T112 - The Elder Council finishes at Cahir Abbey so I start a settler. Seems as though we need more cities ASAP. I notice that we have the Pyre of the Seraphic, granting fire mana, but no fire mana - why is that?  



T113 - Runes of Kilmorph spreads in Cahir Abbey! 

T114 - I start a smokehouse in Glens of Killybeg, which is desperate for health; we will have cows soon. Perhaps this was   and I should be building units/civilians, but I wanted to grow onto the last gold tile. More importantly, we're ready to assault the Goblin Den:


Naturally, we lose the 70% with our Cover warrior, and then a 25% loses flawlessly.   In the end, we lose 3 warriors with odds to lose 1, leaving only 2 warriors remaining. It's lucky I brought the 2 spare! 

T115 - Our warrior cannot do anything to destroy the Goblin Fort, so instead I just fortify on it. Hopefully that prevents units spawning, or else that was a fairly pointless endeavor.  



T118 - We discover... very little, really, to the southwest. I'm not sure if this is even worth blocking off. 


We also get silk connected! 

T120 - We finish researching Knowledge of the Ether, and our settler is due soon. I imagine we send him to the cows/floodplains location, though I could be missing something else. I decided to play 8 turns to get us to a nice round 120 - over to you, DaveV!

[shallow_thought]

Quick thoughts: looks good to me. Shame about the warrior losses but that fort had to be suppressed and you brought enough to the party.

That SW land is ... OKish by Erebus standards? Anything flat and green provides enough food with Agrarianism and irrigation, and I think we'll have both - except only once that second fort is gone, which could take a long time. I suspect we'll have other priorities - let's hope the same is true for the AI.

I feel Ether is a good choice, now that we've got a few econ techs out of the way. I have a nasty feeling that it's logical to go nasty here, with Veil (perhaps followed by Horseback Riding for the mobility?). But even that waits on scouting and expansion. We're going to have to risk warriors - unless maybe Necro and disposable skeletons makes sense?

I suspect we won't get fire Mana from the Pyre until we have researched Elementalism. I'm not sure if we have to explore it before we get it (once explored it collapses into an unimproved fire mana node).

Also, @Brian - why the push for incense? IIRC they are OK commerce tiles, but only give the resource with a later tech (Philo?) and that only gives happy with appropriate temples, and that doesn't include Veil ones. Or is that different in EitB to vanillish?

[Miguelito]

Why can the warrior not explore the goblin fort? Is there a min level requirement or something? Because that's how you should get rid of it (or more barbs in the process )

[shallow_thought]

Why can the warrior not explore the goblin fort? Is there a min level requirement or something? Because that's how you should get rid of it (or more barbs in the process )

Yeah, EitB introduces min level requirements for things; I can't remember the details but it's lower for forts / barrows, and rises to quite high for unique features. This avoids the horrible "some damn AI scout has accidentally summoned a greater demon 6 tiles from my cap on turn 12" problem.

[DaveV]

From the change log:

• Lairs:
- Any military unit can explore Graveyards and Shipwrecks. (No Workboats!)
- Only Level 2+ units can explore Barrows and Ruins. (2XP minimum)
- Only Level 3+ units can explore Goblin Forts and Dungeons. (4/5XP minimum)
- Only Level 4+ units can explore Unique Features. (8/10XP minimum)
- Epic Lairs take 3 turns to explore, all other lairs take 1 turn to explore (exploration triggers at start of next turn

Got it, I should be able to play today.

[DaveV]

I opened the save, and had fire mana. Here's the mouseover of the civ flag in the upper left, which shows the version numbers. I'm pretty sure I'm on the latest version, but if others could compare it would be reassuring.



I didn't pop the goblin fort; lair results are heavily skewed towards bad outcomes. The so-called neutral outcomes are almost all bad, meaning the odds are about 70% for a bad result. I did fortify a warrior on top of the lair; I'm pretty sure that prevents spawns.

I decided to go for Sanitation, since we're working mostly farms. That speeds up our settlers/workers and lets us grow all the cities to the happy cap. I chose Philosophy for the next tech, on what appears to be the consensus route to Corruption of Spirit. We really need some extra firepower (pun intended), and Ashen Veil gives us the best priest unit and the very powerful Diseased Corpse (who can, conveniently, be cured of their diseased status by a priest or by stepping into the Pool of Tears).

The actual turnplay was pretty uneventful. The exploring warrior in the southwest followed the coastline (surviving attacks by a spider and a scorpion!) to reveal a couple pigs, a clam, and a fish, so that might help with our health issues. I settled a city on the river instead of the marked tile one away from the river, mostly for the health bonus. The worker northeast of the city is supposed to build a road leading to the cows.

I'm building a mage guild in Glens of Killybegs so we can crank out a couple utility mages for Spring and Courage.

We gained another -1 with Volanna when I refused to cancel open borders with the Luchuirp.

Here's an overview of our territory and the land to our southwest:





Note the barb city borders to our south.

Future plans:

Glen of Killybegs will grow next turn, and should stagnate on gold, copper, and three floodplain farms. We'll want at least one or two adepts after the mage guild completes. Inishbofin can grow on a warrior or two after it finishes the worker, then stagnate on settlers/workers.

I figured the "city here?" sign is probably the best location for our next city, unless something amazing appears in the fog when Slane pops borders next turn. We could put a couple good cities in the southwest and even in the southeast once we have a Spring adept. Neither of the barb cities is amazing but they could be solid additions to our empire once we have the units to capture them.

On that note: we'll need to get out of Despotism once our city count increases. I know Brian was advocating for Aristocracy, but I think EitB has nerfed that choice so much that City States is generally a better choice.

[DaveV]

On that note: we'll need to get out of Despotism once our city count increases. I know Brian was advocating for Aristocracy, but I think EitB has nerfed that choice so much that City States is generally a better choice.

On the other hand, I haven't run Ashen Veil in a long time, and Aristocracy + Sacrifice the Weak could be pretty amazing. Plus, we're ORG, so the extra civic maintenance doesn't hit as hard, and Courthouses are relatively cheap.