[PLAYER THREAD] Brian's Awesome Thread of Awesomeness

[Brian Shanahan]

The game came around again.

Big thing this turn was the worker came out, and I started him on cottaging the second cotton tile.  I put Cahir Abbey on a elder council for a) the extra science and b) the specialist for future bulbing possiblities.  My original worker (I think I'll do a naming scheme for them) finished his farm and put one turn into farming the plains tile due west of Mt. Erebus and I'll move him next turn SE to start farming the grassland tile.

In terms of exploring, I found out nothing new, my scout is going north to explore the dead area of the map between me an Miguelito and my explorer warrior is going towards Bings Illians.

In terms of screenshots I'll do them thematically rather than chronologically, first my two cities this turn:

Next the world as we know it:

The victorious warrior:


Pre map Svartalfar knowledge:


Post map share pics:




Northern filler city:

And finally demos:

[Brian Shanahan]

Save played a couple of hours ago.

In terms of diplomacy, Q offered me World map and Open borders:

And I met Bing by moving onto the forested hill. As a gesture of peace I offered him World map and Open borders, though only the World map offer took when taking screenshots:

As a result of my map sharing with Q, I spotted his second city:

He's settled quite on top of Miguelito, though given his cramped borders with both Miguelito and Bing that is understandable. My guess is that Q is looking to firm up strong borders against both Miguelito and Bing before expanding east from his capital into the big plain between him and Auro. But with the border tensions, I wouldn't be surprised if an early war breaks out between him and Miguelito (with possibly Bing joining in too).

In domestic news two barbs showed up at my borders, so I put both my cities onto warrior builds, which should be more than enough to hold them off, albeit at the cost of delaying the reliquary:

[/spoiler}

And HBR finished on the interturn. Shallow_thought, I would like to hear your thoughts on this as well, but over the weekend, I've been thinking of going straight for religion, and my preference is to go for Corruption of the Spirit for the Veil. In the medium term I think that will be the strongest religion, and with their priests, horse units and haste adepts, I think we'll have a strong force to put together for either defence or attack.
[spoiler]

I forgot to post the demographics this turn.

[shallow_thought]

Do you know who it was who built Pact of the Nilhorn, BTW? I have a suspicion it was Bing, based on a quick scan of the save this morning.

[Brian Shanahan]

Do you know who it was who built Pact of the Nilhorn, BTW? I have a suspicion it was Bing, based on a quick scan of the save this morning.

Took another look at the save, and I can't say for certain. I'll see whose power jumps tomorrow.

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok save is played.

First things first, I'll go over the domestic goodies before talking about news.

First of all I got HBR and chose Knowledge of the Ether for my next tech.  Secondly, I did a bit of tile swapping giving the corn back to my capital, freezing Mt Erebus at four pop until the farm I'm building is finished (probably should have done this earlier, but hey).  The barb warrior landed on my horsies (my lovely horsies!) curtailing the capital's production (must rename it some day), so my second warrior will take two more turns.  And finally my second cottage is up and running, I'll probably start buidling mines in the capital for the production.

Now the news:
Q is making his move.  Why do I say this?
1) Huge power spike, like really bigly like yuuuuuuuuuge!

Even Bing's increase from the Pact of the Nilhorn is nothing compared to it:

2) Where's the powerspike coming from.  Well first look at the land:

What's the Ljosalfar (sp?) world spell? Instant Treants.  All those forests going to new forests gives you 1million soldiers!

My guess, Q is going to run over Miguelito in the next five turns and hope he has enough good land to dig himself out of the economy hole the Treants put him into so that he can build an army to gobble Bing up with before he attacks himself.  I forgot to check if Q has officially declared war yet (and I'm not opening the save again just for that) but he should have because the Treants aren't permanent and need to be used asap.  Will taking Miguelito out be enough, I don't know? It's our job to ensure a no.

In other news Bing accepted my offers and I know a small bit more of the world.

And finally here's the demographics

[shallow_thought]

I forgot to check if Q has officially declared war yet (and I'm not opening the save again just for that) but he should have because the Treants aren't permanent and need to be used asap.  Will taking Miguelito out be enough, I don't know? It's our job to ensure a no.

Yeah, he declared war; going to be a short game for Mig.

I dunno about this. Taking out an opponent is only good if you actually get to benefit from their land, and this early in the game the neighbour who didn't fight is as likely to benefit as the agressor (this can be skewed a bit if capital sites are OP compared to the rest of the map, but I don't think this applies here). I wonder if Q has gone all in because the map wasn't quite what he was expecting, pushing for an early conclusion one way or the other. I kind of hope that Bing looks at our Worldspell and decides to throw his giants at someone else - ideally Auro, although I don't think the geography suits. I suspect he's more likely to pick something from Mig's corpse or to see if he can have some fun with Q once those walking trees die off ... overall, this could be a good thing.

[Brian Shanahan]

I forgot to check if Q has officially declared war yet (and I'm not opening the save again just for that) but he should have because the Treants aren't permanent and need to be used asap.  Will taking Miguelito out be enough, I don't know? It's our job to ensure a no.

Yeah, he declared war; going to be a short game for Mig.

I dunno about this. Taking out an opponent is only good if you actually get to benefit from their land, and this early in the game the neighbour who didn't fight is as likely to benefit as the agressor (this can be skewed a bit if capital sites are OP compared to the rest of the map, but I don't think this applies here). I wonder if Q has gone all in because the map wasn't quite what he was expecting, pushing for an early conclusion one way or the other. I kind of hope that Bing looks at our Worldspell and decides to throw his giants at someone else - ideally Auro, although I don't think the geography suits. I suspect he's more likely to pick something from Mig's corpse or to see if he can have some fun with Q once those walking trees die off ... overall, this could be a good thing.

Bing building up some meatbags to back up his giants and throwing them at Q the minute the Treants die off is probably the best option. If he does it right, what's left of Q's army is stuck on the wrong side of the map.

[Brian Shanahan]

The save is played, but I won't make a big report mainly because it was a boring turn.

The only exciting things that happened were a) both barbs went to Mt. Erebus, surprisingly, b) I cut science back to 0% for a turn because I'd run out of money a turn before discovering KotE and c) I rename the capital as Mt. Terror.

[shallow_thought]

Looks like Bing is bee-lining the Ilian toys hard; I don't think he has a second city out but has completed Samhain. IIRC, the only reason to do that is that it's needed to unlock The White Hand ...

It's an aggressive looking game so far.

[Brian Shanahan]

Looks like Bing is bee-lining the Ilian toys hard; I don't think he has a second city out but has completed Samhain. IIRC, the only reason to do that is that it's needed to unlock The White Hand ...

It's an aggressive looking game so far.

Sorry for not being too communicative over the weekend, I was up home for the Easter long weekend.

Yeah I noticed Samhain, and it's really fecked up my worker schedule having had both workers being deleted in the last turn or two. My first worker lost, Bravo, I don't even know what killed him because he was one tile south of my second city one turn and the next turn with no barb either on the tile or (as far as I can see from the logs) suiciding the city. And the last worker went because of a frostling horse unit swooping in out of the fog to snatch him away. I'll have to rebuild both workers before expanding, but the likelihood is that everybody (bar Q) will be similarly affected.

The Illians are really annoying to play against simply because of Samhain and the Deepening later on in the tree.