Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Two huts! The tension builds….

I’d be happy to see the scout swing south if you want, especially as we’d want to spot any units before they think about popping the Pyre. Main argument for beelining west would be if we were considering two-moving an empty capital. Of course that might not be a topic we want to dwell on for too long, given our own defenses

I feel a little like a committee member at the Iraq Inquiry, so I’ll repeat a couple of questions:
Does the recon "better results from villages" also apply to lairs/dungeons etc? [I suspect not]
Could we please get a check on the number of land tiles?

Once you’ve got a little more uncovered, I’d loved a zoomed out shot to show the whole surrounding area (maybe with tile yields on to distinguish jungle and ancient forests more easily).

Knew I forgot something when I played. In fairness, I was running of about 2 hours of sleep, so that explains it. :P

I reloaded my last save to get you that answer.



So 1266 land tiles. We know Acheron is around, I'd assume on an offshore island, in the greatest attempt to be noob friendly here. Call that 20 tiles. Maybe another 60-100 in assorted offshore islands, as is typical with this script. In theory you're looking at ~180 tiles per player in a best case scenario. Of course, there's also a probably fairly sizable desert that's going to be reasonably uninhabitable (no Malakim this game) and the overabundance of peak tiles on Erebus - maybe 7 comfortable cities per player?

This is the best I can do for an overview right now. It chops off the Pyre/Ivory/Banana site in the south, but its the most I can get it one shot without changing settings.



Re: Scouts - I am 99.9% sure they do not get better results. The better results on huts is simply that the bad result options in the table are eliminated, not necessarily that you have a better chance at the best stuff, other than by shortening odds. Given that I have definitely popped baddies from dungeons/lairs with scouts before, I feel pretty comfortable that's not how it works there. I do think that I read somewhere that dungeons give better results to higher level units - so there's clearly a different results table mechanism at play there.

Lastly, on the movement issue that both you and Mardoc alluded to. My instinct is to move south with the western scout and let the northern scout move west, but this is FFH. I will probably get many more opportunities to explore my immediate south, but these might be the only scouts I ever have, so I'm somewhat inclined to push west and try and establish contact, since by definition, there should be more civs located that way. And yeah, landing on someone's borders to either raze their capital or extort some palace mana or the like definitely crossed my mind.

[Gaspar]

I was thinking on this a bit after the discussion in my PBEM14 thread. I think the goal of all this chatter we're having has to be to come up with a solid plan for the first 50T or so. I'll try and get my "When Horsies Attack" post up later today, and then follow with "When Animals and Lizardmen and possible Axe-wielding Orcs Attack" post up over the weekend. That should help us solidify our options into a plan that prepares for defense until T50 or so, at which point we can start doing things like dotmapping, a firm tech plan, how many cities by when and all that jazz. I'd really like to use this game to hone my opening skills for Civ in general as well, since I don't think I've played a good opening in either PBEM12 or 14 (Nakor pretty much ran the early game in PB4 alone, and PBEM11 we're taking over for Tatan's open.) While the games are remarkably different, good planning and then executing that plan is something that applies in equal measure to both games, Civ, at its core, is Civ.

So that's something to shoot for. I also think we should have in mind how we want to win, but I'm pretty comfortable that the answer to that question is Domination. Culture is a non-starter, Altar is painful if you're not Philo, Religion is impossible in an MP game unless people are stupid. ToM is an option, but it really doesn't fit the game I want to play. So that pretty much leaves Conquest or Domination, and Conquest in an MP game is lulz.

And since this post has no pictures and I haven't done any Keeblering lately, here have some cookies:

[Man Behind the Mask]

Thanks very much. I feel like a very well fed lurker!

I’ll start with your second post…. One thing I’ve noticed (especially, for example, with the RB team in the Apolyton demogame) is that starting with a plan and then working very hard to hone it to perfection can really pay off. I suppose you’ve got about three days before decisions on worker micro and tech path start being important, so it is time to get going with the plan.

Domination is an admirable aim. We need to find some more nodes soon if we want to think about a Tower victory, and I’m happy to discount culture and religion. I wouldn’t set aside Altar – we’re spiritual, can tech in the late game, will have big cities to run specialists, forest enhanced production for the final push, and a defensive worldspell.

Back to the post before….
I’m happy with whatever you decide about the scout. It’s safe to say we will meet any civ to our immediate south at some point. There is logic to getting as far from home as we can before all the FFH nasties set their sights on the scouts, and Cheech should already be halfway to a western neighbour. I’m sure Mardoc will sympathise with a desire to avoid being isolated.

The big picture has of course sent me into a plotting frenzy.
• The area northwest of the Pyre looks like it‘s forests rather than jungle. A city 1W of the elephant could be food neutral at size 6 or 7 with only one farm or ancient forest (just based on what we’ve seen). I’d say that is legitimate to settle well before bronze working, and is definitely expanding towards our rivals. 1N of elephant fits better from a dotmap point of view, is nearer to the capital, but isn’t on a hill and reduces the number of workable tiles.
• East of the banana fog-gazes as a line of peaks (very helpful for blocking off our core).
• The cotton tile being third ring means we should be able to access the happy without needing to settle that backline location.
• I suspect the marble might have been deliberately placed in a “race” location, equidistant between two civs.

Let me know if the stream of consciousness or bullet point lists aren’t helping. I’m new to this dedlurking business.

[Mardoc]

Lastly, on the movement issue that both you and Mardoc alluded to. My instinct is to move south with the western scout and let the northern scout move west, but this is FFH. I will probably get many more opportunities to explore my immediate south, but these might be the only scouts I ever have, so I'm somewhat inclined to push west and try and establish contact, since by definition, there should be more civs located that way. And yeah, landing on someone's borders to either raze their capital or extort some palace mana or the like definitely crossed my mind.

I can see your argument here, plus it's true that the southern civs are more likely to contact us as well. Really, as long as you keep uncovering tiles, I'll be happy. And if you keep having the luck with huts, ecstatic .

Pick your target for extortion carefully, though. No point in turning a maybe Hippus rush into a certain Hippus rush, for instance .

[Gaspar]

I'll comment on your comments in a bit, first, we have a turn. Huzzah.

Both huts gave gold. 22 and 60 respectively, so at least we're just a little bit of gold saving away from being able to afford a prophet event. This of course means we'll get the evil prophet event.

Oh... and I think we maybe found our stretch city site...



Mmmm. Remnants of Patria. Tasty.

Nothing interesting revealed in the north, just more forested coast. Not that that's a bad thing, but not exciting either.



That's all the news fit to print. No score increases this turn or anything else interesting. Still mainly in the mash enter phase.

[Mardoc]

I'll comment on your comments in a bit, first, we have a turn. Huzzah.

And then, we can comment on your comments on our comments .

Both huts gave gold. 22 and 60 respectively, so at least we're just a little bit of gold saving away from being able to afford a prophet event. This of course means we'll get the evil prophet event.

Oh... and I think we maybe found our stretch city site...

Mmmm. Remnants of Patria. Tasty..

I bet the lurkers were laughing and laughing at our comments like 'someone's already got the remnants?!?!'.

That does look like a beautiful site. And we're even Creative to get it all in quickly. Remnants is a wonderful thing - by the time we settle, it should be a 5 hammer tile, plus 3 happiness in the city that claims it. If we Spring that tile, it'd get up to a 1/6/0 tile. Very tasty.

On the demos - it looks like someone went warrior first . Always a good thing to see in your enemies.

[Gaspar]

Quick aside - the placements of the unique features certainly tells us two things:

1. Ravus manually placed them - ToS on an AF, Pyre in the jungle, RoP on a lonely desert tile surrounded by plains. None of which are normally naturally occurring.

2. Given that we have 3 within a 9 tile radius of our cap, we're all probably pretty close together.

Interestingly enough, he gave us 3 with pretty decent passive benefits. RoP, for one, is probably the second best tile in the game, after Ygg. ToS and Pyre both provide mana. So its a lot better than getting, say, Odio's Prison, Bradeline's Well and Maenulus. Hope the Sheaim didn't get Broken Sepulcher, no need to empower their later game baddies. Hope the Bals didn't get it either, come to think of it. My vote is for the Elohim.

[Man Behind the Mask]

And now you've got me logging in at this time of the evening for the latest turn!

That is beautiful, and would fit on a reasonable dotmap with a city 1N of the elephant. There'd be a couple of wasted tiles, but one could be a fort covering both of the two sites once it turns into a citadel. I'm very much looking forward to what you find from the ancient tower next turn. However, I suspect it will be another civ

FFH at it again with the tech choices, though. Now we want animal husbandry for the two pigs and cow.

Hut gold is good at this early stage of the game. Events, upgrades and hammering out the most important early techs all cost cash.

In demo watching, it looks like someone has settled with some water tiles in the BFC. Maybe not enough to be coastal

[Mardoc]

In demo watching, it looks like someone has settled with some water tiles in the BFC. Maybe not enough to be coastal

No, last turn someone had 8000 land, the only way to have water in the initial square is to be coastal. Seems like a mistake for anyone non-Lanun, though.

[Man Behind the Mask]

No, last turn someone had 8000 land, the only way to have water in the initial square is to be coastal. Seems like a mistake for anyone non-Lanun, though.

Thanks, Mardoc, including for your patience with my ignorance.

It is sort of relevant, since fishing is also a gateway religious tech in FFH.

Given our lucky hut tech, spirituality, and strong desire for water mana, it would have been nice if nobody had the slightest incentive to go anywhere near OO until we really, truly had nothing better to do.

One other observation. I don't think we've seen a single ruins/fort/barrow yet. I don't imagine Ravus was that noob friendly, so there is a chance there are three in a row one tile out of our vision to the south.