New EitB succession game

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok I'll post a got it here and play tomorrow after work. I haven't seen the saves so I'll refrain from posting a plan.

[Qgqqqqq]

Yep, squatting on a lair means it can't spawn. Dave, I can't see your pictures for some reason.

[Aurorarcher]

I can see his pics just fine.

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry lads, I'm going to have to ask for a skip. Thursday was the only realistic day I had for playing the set until next week and instead of playing, I conked out after work.

[shallow_thought]

Sorry lads, I'm going to have to ask for a skip.  Thursday was the only realistic day I had for playing the set until next week and instead of playing, I conked out after work.

OK, got it. Let me know any thoughts you may have had, but it looks like what we really need is expansion and scouting for the moment, with Veil / Priesthood as tech targets although I'd be tempted by Necromancy once we've got a couple of adepts up, if only for the disposable scouts.

[shallow_thought]

T129
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No-one is looking to declare war, so that's nice.

Our economy is breaking even at 80%+ without having either Aristocracy or a single cottage up (I'd still cottage those rivier plains tiles myself once we have the tech, even if we go aristocracy). So that means we need to expand which means we need to scout. We've got a settler due in 4t.

Our military power is close to being a joke though - fortunately, the same is true of Volanna.

T130
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The Sheaim offer open borders, which I take. With them in the game we're going to need to beeline Veil from here. Slane's border pop doesn't reveal much - just a wandering Giant. Glens is starving because a goblin has moved onto a farm. I take the 95% shot against it and win. It hurts not be able to work all four resource mines there - definitely pushes against Aristo. We need health resources badly, but should be getting cows hooked up soon. I see we already have a smokehouse lined up in Glens.


T131
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Quiet

T132
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Philo in; I select Corruption of Spirit but it's 27 turns away right now at break even.

We get an offer to swap a gold for copper. I say no.

The Luichirp have "enough on their hands": I think they are about to fall out with the Orcs. I can't offer any trades to the latter for some reason despite being able to talk with them, so I can't judge their status.

T133
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Settler and worker complete. I line up a pair of warriors - the cap can start on another settler once it's done but we're going to need to scout find a good location. Maybe up near the sheep? Or east of Slane? I send a couple of warriors out to take a peek now that there are replacements in queue. I also realise that scouting to the NW will take us past a killer bear - it's currently immobile in svart lands, but that will probably change if we stand right next to it ... we'll go a different way.

T134
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Settle Garryvoe.

T135
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We get a Great Prophet out of Glens. I double-check, and yes, we can use him for Stigmata on the Unborn if all goes to plan (although that gives beakers not gold, so YMMV). I move him to the cap for now. An alternative would be to burn him on a GA for some civics swaps once we've got the relevant techs. Hopefully our next one will be a Sage - I'd like to get a Academy in Glens, both for beakers and culture.




T136
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I am reminded about why one is cautious scouting in Erebus - I move right next to a lion. I'm keeping to the ridge, but desert hills give no bonus. We do reveal Luichirp borders.




I look at switching research back on, but our cost per-turn is now over 20 gold, whereas it was 10 back at the start of the set - we need better civics. I switch to Education - this gives the next player the choice of either going Apprenticeship / GK or researching Cartography for Apprenticeship / CS; either case would be 1t of anarchy (or burn the GPro, I guess). We want Apprenticeship to pair with Nationalism, and we can build a few cottages at the cap and/or Glens.

T137
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Our warrior pulls off a flawless victory, saving my blushes. If he can make it to Golem-land he can wander about in a bit more safety ...

T138
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Os-Gabella offers us incense for wine. That raises our happy cap (at risk), so yes please. We're likely to be friends if we do many to get to Veil; I guess we don't _have_ to have founded it, but it would be nice.

T139
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Border pop at Garryvoe shows nothing of interest. Our eastern scouting warrior runs into friendly borders, avoiding a bear.




The Luichirp are no longer plotting war BTW. Odd.

I may have made a mistake in not pushing more directly on Veil; the break-even time hadn't changed even although costs have gone up. Having Education will give our workers something to do in the meantime I suppose. I am concerned at our lack of options for good expansion right now. We may have to go military (Veil) first and expand via barb cities and elves.

[DaveV]

I'll repeat, like a broken record, that we can Spring all of that desert, then farm the resulting plains tiles (and use the heck out of the 4/1/2 plains oasis) and build some respectable cities. There are several good coastal spots to the southwest, which would give us some more health resources.

Edit: one more thing about the Veil shrine: it gives Entropy mana, which can weaken enemy melee units significantly, but carries a diplomatic penalty. It seems to me that bulbing Priesthood is the ideal use for a prophet.

[shallow_thought]

I'll repeat, like a broken record, that we can Spring all of that desert, then farm the resulting plains tiles (and use the heck out of the 4/1/2 plains oasis)  and build some respectable cities. There are several good coastal spots to the southwest, which would give us some more health resources.

Edit: one more thing about the Veil shrine: it gives Entropy mana, which can weaken enemy melee units significantly, but carries a diplomatic penalty. It seems to me that bulbing Priesthood is the ideal use for a prophet.

Keep repeating. Personally I'm probably too used to Aristograrianism to see some of the potential in plains tiles, but I'd love to have some more unit-pumps before we have to go to war. And I tend to underuse bulbs, so I don't look for them hard enough - that could be a really useful move.

Diplo is a bit odd - we have weakish, Evil neighbour, who probably won't mind if we spam Death and Entropy, but they are plausibly our first target. The Sheiam strike me as a medium-term friend if we go to the dark side, and we probably won't upset the Orcs much either. So the problem is the Luichirp - our current best friends, neighbour and a major power.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I just played a couple of turns, finishing Education and grabbing Festivals too because it's cheap and we can build markets.
I also adopted God-King and Apprenticeship, feeling we aren't settling snakelike enough for carto/City States to be worth it.

But now I don't know what to do on the religion front. Do we want to go Ashen Veil or not? It seems like there has been a bit of a debate but it hasn't come to an explicit conclusion.

My thoughts:
-You chaps say (and I believe) it's the most powerful option because of fireball priests. Sacrifce the Weak is powerful, even though +food and +disease is a bit redundant with all these floodplains, it would be nice with Slavery. Diplomatically not great since we want to attack the nearby Svartalfar anyway, and the Luichirp are the score leaders.

-Researching to Honor for the Empyrean religion only takes 40% more beakers and trade/writing are good techs in themselves.
On the downside, it is less powerful overall (I gather from shallowthought) and its Sun mana is redundant with the Mirror of Heaven.
However it's what I would personally like to do since we're a Good nation in a desert - I don't mind much about "thematic" choices but like doing them occasionally when up against AI.

-Researching to Orders from Heaven takes as long as getting Ashen Veil, picking up courthouses and aristocracy along the way (though I agree the civic may not be the right choice).
Social Order civic seems powerful, basically vanilla Monarchy. We are near happy cap in some cities.

-4th option is ignoring religion tech for now but that seems both weak and boring and doesn't use the Great Prophet. Incidentally, the guy's bulb points at Corruption of Spirit now, not Priesthood.

So, can people re-iterate their opinions? As mentioned I would prefer Empyrean but don't really mind at all.

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry lads, I'm going to have to ask for a skip.  Thursday was the only realistic day I had for playing the set until next week and instead of playing, I conked out after work.

Sorry about dropping the game, it's just last week the nights were very hot (for Ireland, admittedly) & I wasn't sleeping well. So I had no energy to do anything Thursday night, Friday night after work I was at the Cork City v Cobh Ramblers game and got home late, then the weekend I was up home with the parents.

On the game itself, Dave is right we need to utilise the deserts by settling and springing them up. We have the tools and with Aristo we can do a mix of farms and workshops on them to make them decently powerful. Our current core is a nice powerful financial centre, what we need now is unit pumps.

Bing, the main reason Veil is so powerful is that it comes earlyish in the tech tree, gives us access to a decently strong tier 2 offensive spell and some strong heroes and specialist units. If you just want to steamroll the opposition in single player, you either go with the Horse centric civ (forget their name) or go for tier 2 units, haste adepts and Veil priests. Once you have a big enough stack(s) you're unstoppable.

PS Just to add, we should expand hard over the next few turnsets, we're effectively at 80% science, the extra cities and production are well supportable, if we can spend the next twenty to thirty turns founding and building up cities, I think when we do break out we will be simply unstoppable. There's good land out there that's going a begging and land out there that can be made good. Build enough army to take the two barb cities, build settlers and promote a few adepts to Nature one and get cranking on those new cities, before it's too late.