[Spoilers] A more civilized age - Arendel of the Ljosalfar (Uberfish)

[uberfish]

My warrior was flanked by the lion from the southeast and a griffon on the northwest peak, so made a two-move Elven retreat back to the desert hill to avoid a likely death. Unfortunately, due to the early Calabim acquisition of Hunting, they may be able to get an edge against the barbarians and animals and reach this site first.

Nothing else of note happened this turn, how boring.

[uberfish]

My initial goal will be to quickly settle the first ring of cities 4-5 tiles away from Evermore, claiming the various floodplains, Fire/Death mana and gems in the process before barbarian cities start popping up in inconvenient locations. Due to the general lack of luxuries in the area, a focus on cottages and raising the happiness cap through religion/animal capture will be important. The area near Pool of Tears needs to be scouted too.

I will probably be getting a 2nd worker before the first settler to get cottages and roads down quickly, and I suspect the site near Sepulcher could use a 3-warrior escort to be safe if I go for that early.

[uberfish]

Evermore grows to size 5 EOT and I get 7 points. No score movements but rather worrying is the following graph:



As there was no change in score this means Calabim have probably gotten some free units from an event/lair to add to their free Hunting tech. Obviously this is rather annoying as I'll now have to build more warriors than I'd like in order to be safe from attack, and delay workers/settlers further, while on their side they can expand quickly. Also settling near Broken Sepulcher might be rather risky as there isn't much forest around there for March of the Trees to protect the area.

Overall it's more likely that Calabim will get Sepulcher now (they'll have the units to explore and will no doubt consider it a priority), and I might have been tempted to explore it if my warrior could actually get anywhere near the site. As it is I've had to retreat back inside my borders due to the lion approaching again, the known presence of the griffon in the area, and the importance of keeping units alive to maintain a decent power rating.

[uberfish]

The most likely explanation for the power spike was the "Dwarves vs Lizards" lair exploration result, and Sunrise confirmed it. This is one of the most fun things you can get from a lair and a great result early game, dwarves and lizards fight and you get to pick a side. You get two of that unit type and barbarians get three of the other. I normally take lizards, apparently our Calabim players took dwarves because of hills in the area. So that's two more 4 str units for them. Fortunately, I do have the option to set my capital to 1 turn warrior builds to deal with any spotted incoming rushes, but it would still be wise to increase my power rating.

[uberfish]

Warrior finishes EOT taking my count to 4 with another one due next turn to fix my anaemic power graph a bit.

Going to try and take a quick look with my warriors near Pool of Tears, then maybe bring a larger squad back down near Sepulchre.

Score changes.

Varn 116->150, probably the 3rd border expansion kicking in
Perp 121->140, probably same
Amelia 87->98, tech

On this note there must be something wrong with the previously done score analysis as Demographic screen shows me 3rd in population @ 5, so there clearly can't be 4 civs with 6+ population... I might give this up.

[uberfish]

The FP farm is complete and education is due in four more turns. I won't need the second FP farmed for a while yet, so I'll probably put a couple of turns into building the future Ivory connection road. For people used to vanilla Civ4, Ivory isn't such a big deal in FFH as you can't train elephants, only capture them; it's just a +1 happiness resouce.

The next builds will be warrior #5, worker #2 (coming out at the same time Education finishes for faster cottaging) and then settler unless anything worrying happens on the power graph. I'll try to get a bit more exploration done, then discuss where to place my second city slightly when it's due.

At this point I believe Mist to be trustworthy because we are openly discussing builds, C&D info and future plans to attack other civs, which is a much higher level of communcation than exists with either Sciz or Calabim (mostly information exchange there.)

[uberfish]

Doviello diplomacy:

- Mist triggered the Guardian of Pristinus Pass somewhere in the area between Sciz and himself which means that there are str8 gargoyles wandering around, I offered to recon the area when I get hunting so that his dwarf invasion stack can move around safely

- Regarding division of land between us



Mist wanted the cyan site. I let him know what other resources were in the area, but he wasn't interested in anything south of that site. As I consider this a pretty good deal for me since I get 2 mana sources and a gem, I offered to move my settling plan a bit in order to avoid being too close to his city, resulting in a first ring plan looking like this (city to the SW dependent on further scouting) Basically the "pyre city" location has been moved 2 east.

[uberfish]

Also:

- the gargoyles from Pristinus Pass might happen to randomly attack either Doviello, Luchuirp or myself, it'd be best to keep a decent defence at Evermore. Apprenticeship to get 1-promotion warriors (strength 3.6 vs 3) should be available by the time they could get to me, they move 1 square per turn. This area of the world seems to be filled with rather dangerous unique features to be sure.

- Mist's stated plan atm is to either kill dwarves or force an agreement that he gets all the land between them, then head west against Calabim/Balseraph

- Doviello are planning to run with lots of ~10 sized cities, which probably fits well with an upgrading strategy where you don't need huge hammer production to pump out the units; I don't play this style, so I'm not sure how much of an impact civic and number of cities costs will have. As elves I'll be using a wider city spacing and eventually 20+ sized cities.

- Mist offered to clear some jungle for me if I need it (would be useful for the Gems/Fire Mana/Sugar site as Bronze Working is not a very high priority for me), he has furs somewhere in the tundra and I offered to connect it for him if he doesn't have hunting by then.

[Dantski]

In games I've played, Gargoyles have never entered a civ's borders so I don' believe you have much to worry about there as long as they don't interfere with the Gems/Fire mana site.

A bit surprised at how open Mist is being with his diplomacy with you, have you asked Sciz whether he's talking with them much? His answer probably won't reveal anything terribly useful but I'm still wary of Mist playing nice and backstabbing.

[uberfish]

IMO more openness is more likely to mean a genuine desire for cooperation than a setup for a backstab, last I checked Doviello/Luchuirp/Calabim still hadn't contacted each other so can't be plotting together against me. It's obviously possible that the worker-upgrade rush could be used against me instead, but the chances of success would just be reduced by having told me about the strategy and likely timing.