Varn of the Illians - Serdoa and WK playing it cool

[Ellimist]

Where was the hut?

[Serdoa]

3SW,1S of your capital.

[Serdoa]

Nothing much to tell. Game is moving on nicely. Krill (I think) has turned on research and is actually on par with me if I have no tech selected. Thats pretty good and a little bit fearsome tbh. Lets hope it was a tech with 2 pre-reqs at least.

Apart from that, I am just expanding and trying to get another GS. Will take 30 turns if I want to be sure to get one though.

Oh, and I found Sareln - only a little bit too late:

[Serdoa]

Planted 2 new cities, captured a third. Up to 8 now. I need more workers ... much more workers. And happiness, though that will be less of an issue soon I think, as I will get 2 new happy resources (gold, wines) and hopefully a third (fur) not too far in the future. I guess I will get to 10 cities before I stop expanding for a bit.

[Serdoa]

I lied, I need to get to 15 cities before I can stop expanding. That will take some more turns then I initially planned. On the other hand, I will get gold in 6 turns. Wines in probably 8-10. Thats a happy cap of 11 then I think. 12 with furs, 13 with furs and Hunting Lodge. 14 with state religion (?), 15 with temple and incense (?)... that religious stuff I am still unsure about. Have to check next turn as I got a spread of OO anyway (first spread for me in this game) so at least I have now 1 religion in 2 cities... yeah, spreading doesn't work that great in a big empire with like 16 tiles of wildlands between the two centers of it...

However, research does work out not too badly:



184 a turn at turn 87. And 44 gold per turn expenses - but thats simply because my empire is so wide due to me keeping Mists old capital and even planting another city there + taking a barb city directly in the middle between Mists old lands and mine. But with Consumption, I should get at least 120+ gold a turn I think at 100% gold, so good enough for 3 turns of 100%. Works out to ~135 beakers breakeven I think. I'll check next turn for the exact numbers.

[Serdoa]

Well, I am still teching ahead. Finished Arete, Elementalism. Now on Sorcery. Making good progress. Picture is a thousand words, so



And I found the Grigori:

[Rowain]

Nice Stats

[Serdoa]

Well, the last demos I showed were from T98 - Demos 10t later, at T108:



GNP is still strong. Research:



I'm falling back in crop yield though. But that's actually not that bad - or rather, I expected that. I have basically stopped expansion for some time now, only being at 10 cities now. I will settle two more sites but apart from that I don't plan to do any more settling. Not because I run out of land, I have enough land for... no clue, I probably could expand till T150 without issues. But hey, Krill can do that as well only much better then I can. So that doesn't look like a winning strategy.

Therefore I had a talk with WK - already some time ago - about victory conditions. And he hinted me at the ToM (I had considered culture instead). That was GREAT! Because ToM is better in my situation. I mean one can win culture in like 12 turns as Mist explained somewhere else on these forums, but he forgot to mention that you need like 20 turns setup time AFTER you have all the techs you need + I think he was too optimistic in regards to GA-production. So, anyway, my whole game revolves around getting ToM right now. And while thinking about it, I stumbled upon this city of mine which can be a great producer IF I can grow it big enough



As can be seen, great production, but no food. And I intend to change to Conquest soon as well, so even less food (losing Agrarianism). I thought about building the Temple of the Hand here, converting all tiles to snow. If I understood everything right, they work like grassland for me, but I'll lose riverside commerce boni. Doesn't matter for me though, because thats 3 commerce here - I can live with that if I get more food out of the city in exchange. Now, looking at it, the plains farms (marked with 3/0) should then be snow farms with 4/0, right? What will happen with the Oasis though? Will it become a Grassland or a Grassland Oasis? And what would a Grassland Oasis yield? And the cow? Will it be 4/2 afterwards? And the gold 1/3 (yes, I am in Arete)?

[Ilios]

Oasis will be 5/0/3, Cow will be 4/2/0, hills will be 1/3 (1/4 with Arete).

[Serdoa]

Thanks Illios. Decided thats worth it and built my first Temple of the Hand now.