Aurorarcher is making the world disappear

[Aurorarcher]

Dang, that title remainds me of PBEM XLIV .

[Bobchillingworth]

Your start:

[Aurorarcher]

Thanks, Bob.

By a quick look SIP seems obvious. Civ with Agriculture as starting tech would be perfect here, Calendar as 1st tech. The jungle tile(s) suck though, better hope it doesn't spread to that one riverside grass there is left.

Now I need to start considering the civs + the spell with my adept.

I was initially thinking Meta to be a superior choice (easy scouting), unless I choose Amurites obviously. The Palace mana are going make the thinking harder.

Manas that I think are useful to have with adept at start or from palace mana later when the adept gains xp. I'm not considering the 2nd/3rd tier spells because they're just so far away.

The very useful ones:

- Death: Free (base) strength 3 unit. Useful both for scouting/dealing with the raging barbs.
- Meta: Free Hawk with longer vision.
- Body: 2 moves early.
- Mind: +2b/t and +1 GPP (sage), small research addition, not totally useless to get the snowball rolling. Even more useful with PHI leader, gives SAGE on T34 if you have Mind I from T0.
- Enchantment: +20% strenght for warriors, not bad.
- Ice: Slow down raging barbs or enemy later? Very useful, also Ice can't be really used otherwise unless you play with Illians or find the Unique Feature which might not even exist on the map.


Then okay-dokey section, situational but could be useful:

- Water: I see that Oasis!
- Spirit: Faster healing but not that big of a deal early on
- Entropy: Same as Spirit, not very useful early
- Fire: Burn those jungles down. In theory could work in some situations.


Then the kind of meh section:

- Earth: Free walls. Not the worst but not worth it.
- Sun: Umm, no.
- Life: Just bad.
- Air: Maybe if I want even faster ships.
- Chaos: Meh.
- Shadow: Sucks.
- Nature: No.

[Aurorarcher]

Civs that have great Manas from palace, (Red = very useful, Blue = okay-dokey, Green = meh)

#1 Amurites (Meta, Body, Fire)
#2 Illians (Ice, Enchantment, Law)

None of the other civs have 2 great starting manas from palace. Meta/Body combo would be very nice to start with.

Civs with at least one great mana from palace:

- Balseraphs (Mind, Chaos, Air)
- Bannor (Spirit, Earth, Law)
- Calabim (Body, Law, Shadow)
- Clan (Body, Fire, Nature)
- Doviello (Body, Chaos, Earth)
- Elohim (Spirit, Water, Nature)
- Grigori (Enchantment, Spirit, Water)
- Hippus (Nature, Air)
- Khazad (Enchantment, Earth, Law)
- Kuriotates (Spirit, Water, Sun)
- Lanun (WaterChaos, Air)
- Ljosfalsar (Nature, Air, Life)
- Luchuirp (Enchantment, Earth, Life)
- Malakim (Mind, Sun, Life)
- Sheaim (Death, Fire, Chaos)
- Sidar (Enchantment, Spirit, Shadow)
- Svartalfar (Mind, Shadow, Nature)

Obviously the Palace is not all that there is, but the coloring should help me to decide. Obviously some of the "weak" manas are worse than others and also some "very good" manas are better than others. But then again, all have their uses. Now, I need to decide on the Civ as well, and I might not even get my top choice. Need to look for a combination of mana + palace manas that I think suit for the game I plan to play best.

Currently Amurites is looking like a good choice, but haven't really thought much yet. Amurite's Dain (PHI/ARC) could very well use Mind as an additional spell with adept to get sage early. Also ARC would give my adept xp faster... not sure that's worth it but at least then ARC won't be totally useless from the start.

More thoughts on Civ's/leaders to come later.

[Aurorarcher]

Picks:

#1 Dain of Amurites (PHI/ARC) with Mind mana:

Perfect palace manas. Body/Meta simply awesome and Fire could be useful with the Jungle. I want Mind to use PHI early for sage. Plan is to get to Firebows realtively fast and draft them untill everyone is dead. For this early sage (faster teching) is going to help. I'm trying to figure out how to bulb Bowyers but I think I need GE for that so it might be impossible to do it early. Before I have Firebows I have to play pretty peacefully and just sit back.

#2 Sandalphon of Sidar (PHI/IND) with Mind mana:

EitB v12 has reduced the level requirement for shades to level 5 (17 xp). Should be easy to get a lot of 17 xp units with raging barbs. Here Enchantment mana and Spirit could be useful. I'm getting Mind for economical snowballing reasons. Meta wouldn't be a bad choice either to scout for potential barb targets.

#3 Alexis of Calabim (PHI/AGG) with Metamagic mana:

Calabim = their WS which is probably one of the best. Also C1 Morois out of gate with Body Mana, mmm... And add to that Burning Blood which I can cancel out with Law mana! I've wanted to try new Alexis now that they can build ECs.

#4 Varn Gosan of Malakim (SPI/CRE/ADA) with Metamagic mana:

+2c from BFC and they have Mind mana too from the palace. Their WS is great too. Would probably try to get fast OO and use my WS early.

#5 Perpentach of Balseraphs with Metamagic mana:

I just added this randomly. There's no way I'll end up with the Balseraphs .

[Aurorarcher]

Turn 1 played. Settled in place, sent scout west and started Inspiration for a research boost.

As Jale is 1st in turn order I get to see what he started with:




Looks like jale Settled on a plains hill (sad that my hill is a desert ) and is working 3f1c tile. Also he didn't settle on coast which might not be the best decision if you're playing with Lanun. He didn't take Mind mana or I'd expect higher GNP. He probably took Meta/Death.

Also, I noticed that Inspiration adds +2k to power, I have no idea why though. Any lurker have a clue?

EDIT: Jale's hill was plain hill because he used Spring to turn his desert plains... Dumb me, noticed this on T42!

[Aurorarcher]

Another turn today, yay!

I sent a floating eye to the east:




Not that interesting land. Dyes everywhere but no other happy resources seen so far (other than the furs in the west). The land seems pretty dry and foresty too. Not many grassland riversidetiles either (without chopping).

Notice that I can use Inspiration in cap even if I cast other spells (only have to stay in the city).

Demos EoT:




What can I tell from this? Someone is getting 16 GNP and that much be the Balseraphs researching Calendar. They also started with Mind mana from their palace and are using Inspiration as well. Mardoc is working 4 hpt (effectively 5 with his IND).

Also I am 2nd in GNP and 2nd in turn order which (probably) means that none else picked Mind mana as their choice.

[Aurorarcher]

South:




North:




Zooming out reveals Dave:




Demos T4:




See me being 3rd in power. That could mean that one of other player have Mind mana too (besides me and Moalach), and that one player is either Mardoc/Dave. It could also be someone summoning skeleton (I forgot how much power that would be, can't check now).

[Aurorarcher]

Contact with Dave:




Graphs:







I didn't bother to take Food/Prod graphs as both of us have been at 5f/2h from the start of the game without changes. Notice the power spike. That's a 3k worth of skeleton summoned on T4. It'll be even more useful for Dave as his traits are (SUM/ARC/SUND) as his skeleton starts with C1 and M1. I'm not sure what's that 2k power addition on the 2nd turn in the game. It could be that Dave chose Mind too so he would've been using Inspiration for a turn (on T2). But then I have no idea why didn't keep doing it as his GNP stayed lower than mine. Or is he using fire to burn jungle/forest - nah, doesn't seem very likely. Either way his GNP graph is a bit odd to me. On T4 he switched to working Oasis as well.

On T6 I found Lanun's scout nearby:




Demos T6:




Obviously I'm seeing T6 from Jale here and T5 from others as I'm 2nd in turn order.

[Aurorarcher]

Some update:

Agriculture for 3 civs on T8: Sheaim, Sidar and Lanun. I got the tech turn earlier with Inspiration.

Lanun and Sheaim have found my borders, if they come too close I can use hasted warrior to kill them. I'm not doing that unless they're provoking me because I want to keep the good relations as long as possible. I have a bit of reputation from previous games that I'll declare war early and often; here I am trying the opposite.

Here's an early dotmap attempt.




I'm trying to figure out how to make most out of this rather crappy land, the lack of rivers is kind of discouraging, and there's not that many freshwater tiles either without the need of chopping.

So the red marks are the sites I'll probably put my first 2 cities. The western one has 2 freshwater grassland in its 1st ring and it can borrow Oasis/FP from the cap. After cap gets its 2nd border pop it can also use plainhill tile. Overall at happy cap (size 5 with cotton) it can work decent 5 tiles without needing a border pop. Also this city is very close to capital and can be settled 2 turns faster than the eastern city (without roads that is). Obviously I'd road to the city site but yeah.

The eastern one is the one that is a bit tricky site. Obivously I want to share the Corn and I could go 1S but then I can't settle on the coast for Crab/Fish later. Also a plainhill city is always nice to have if possible. The city can use 2 very good food tiles Corn and Cow but it can't work very good tiles at size 5 without border pop but it's not all that terrible anyway. Gives a bit more commerce than the eastern city as it has more rivers around it.

I'll probably for the western city first for the reasons that I'll try to explain below.

So then there's the battleground between me and Dave. I'd really like the pink site but I'm almost 100% certain that I won't have chance to get that, it's way too close to Dave, and I could very well live with the yellow one - that is if I can get even that . The yellows a bit more distant from Dave and closer to me so shouldn't spark border tension quite as much. Obviously a lot depends on whether Dave settles towards me or not. If he settles 1N of the pig I might be screwed because then settling even on the yellow is a big midde finger to Dave and in no time we'd be in war. Anyway, if I were to get the yellow spot I should be able to reinforce the city a lot easier than the pink one. I want to push west with 3rd/4th city, so for this reason getting 2nd city the same way would be great.

Need more scouting to east to see whether or not the land would be better there. The land I've seen so far has been too foresty/dry. Of course I'll probably find Lanun to be pretty close to me from east...

Here's the picture to illustrate the situation between me and Dave:




I'm a bit jealous of Dave's start. He has a great city 2nd site on the coast near the corn with all thosr riverside grassland tiles . Well, at least the Corn is dry, for what that's worth...

EDIT: Looks like I can't count. Obviously the distance from me to pink site is 8 tiles .