RBPBEM FfH V [SPOILERS] Sareln of the Amurites

[Sareln]

Diplomacy:

[COLOR="Magenta"]Iskender,

This division is acceptable to me. NAP and settlement plans will be honored by the Amurites.

One of the Clan's sugars is unjungled, the rest have jungles on them.

Cotton for silk is something I will happily do once we establish a trade network. If you find doubles of another happy resource, I have found a doubled-wine to my south that I'd be willing to trade as well.

Mutual defensive resource trading is also a good idea. Let's revisit this once one of us has visibility on copper or are building adepts (Enchantment/Body mana swaps).

The rest of this e-mail regards the details of the training deal:

I think your pricing on the mana is a bit high . 100 xp is nearly 4 great people, 300 xp is nearly 12. That's quite a bit for a handful of turns of mana with which to make adept/mage upgrades. I'd be more likely to value mana quite a bit lower. Following the rules of halves, I think it more likely that mana is worth between 50 ~ 150 xp. Notice that I've listed mana in terms of xp, I'm also about to argue for a different GC:XP conversion rate.

For the xp -> gold conversion, keep in mind that great merchants allow you to transmute 26 xp into 9 gpt (settle in a God-King capital, ignoring other gold modifiers that you'll get later on, especially since one of us will need currency to do trades), so after you settle the great merchant he'll pay himself off in about 3 turns under the 1:1 rate. I'd like a better deal on that, perhaps 45 gc per 26 xp base (GM profit after 5 turns)?

That's about 1.7 gc/xp pre-inflation, so factor in the inflation modifier and turn that into maybe 2.5 gc/xp? That way you'd still be in the black after 7-8 turns, faster as you get more gold modifiers in your capital. Since you've stated that it would take your units ~70 turns with passive XP, I think you're still getting a pretty solid boost with 26+8 = 34 turns total for each Shade to show profit (since self-raised shades start generating profit immediately).

Are there any assumptions that I'm missing that make the 3 paragraphs above a load of bull? I think I've gotten the calculations more-or-less right.

Sincerely,

Sareln

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[Sareln]

Tredje sends along a request for a chat.

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Hey Sareln,

Let us have a chat about land/NAP. When would be a good time for you? As you probably remember my timezone is GMT+1, so unless you are a night creature it would probably be easier if we did it in the afternoon/evening GMT+1.

-Tredje

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[Sareln]

I give Tredje a time that's my morning and hopefully his afternoon if I did my math right.

It's getting awful lonely in this thread here, would folks like to chime in a bit just to let me know that they're reading? :neenernee

[fire&ice]

this is me chiming in dedicated lurker that is at a lose as to what you are doing.

[Sareln]

Turn 41:

Elder council finished, Hire a scientist and micro up as much commerce as I can possibly get my hands on while keeping a 2 turn warrior pace. Orthus is coming, after all, and we must be ready (for both Orthus and Orcs, just in case it diplomacy fails). Crafting in 3. Faster if I ever finish that 2nd plantation . Incidentally, this takes me to #1 in demographics.

My scout moves to avoid the bear and ends up next to the same giant spider. Perhaps I should've marked the spot the last time my scout got eaten...

As mentioned in diplomacy, Tredje wants to chat. I've e-mailed him a potential time, but haven't heard back from him yet.

Doomed Scout:

Capital:

Demographic Screen:

[Sareln]

This is me, a dedicated lurker, chiming in that I am at a complete loss as to what you're doing

That's okay, I probably haven't elaborated it too much yet, but since you asked so nicely, I'll see if I can concisely state my mind at this point in the game.

Here's the current situation from my point of view: I'm on a relatively small landmass with 5 other sides, and I have two immediate neighbors. I am a weak early-game faction which gets stronger as the game goes on and I'm able to tech up to magic/religion/heros etc. The map has several very good choke points which I can target for eventual acquisition/pushing.

Fortunately, one of my neighbors (Iskender) is in the same boat as me, so it makes sense to team up with him for the time being to make sure that we both make it to the midgame. This makes double-sense for me because I'm confident that if it comes to it, I'll be able to kill him if I plan for it (his worldspell is nullified by the tech-line I'm pursuing, and his faction isn't particularly notable beyond that).

However, I'm also neighboring the quick-kill aggressive team in this game, who is looking for someone to rush. They've got all the tools to take at least one player out of the game early. I'm trying to deflect this with diplomacy primarily, but if that fails, the goal is to make it as painful as possible for the rushing player. This is also why a deal with Iskender on settling sites right now is useful. If the Clan does come for me and I'm badly weakened by fending them off, the only other person who can expand into my natural space has already promised not to. He could break his word, of course, but this community tends to frown on that. A reasonable gamble on my part. Ideally, I'd be able to cut a deal with the quick-kill team to have them go in another direction while I make my way to the mid-game unmolested, rather than having to fend off their rush. That's the goal I'm going to keep in mind when I go into conversation with Tredje tomorrow morning (if he agrees to meet).

At midgame I need to stage a breakout. This can happen in a number of ways, but all basically hinge on leveraging my civ's strengths + the strengths of whichever religion I end up grabbing. I've decided to focus on Empyrean since I get a free Sun mana from the mirror, so that means getting my draft on and pushing out a ton of units with spell-power. During the midgame, I expect to kill at least one of my neighbors, maybe both. It depends if I can interest any of their other neighbors in a split. Natural allies in this endeavor are Squareleg if I want to hit Iskender and Bob if I want to hit the Clan. If the Clan is looking especially scary unit-numbers wise, then it would probably make sense to include both Bob and Sqaureleg in such an endeavor. If the Clan hits one of those two early as their target, it's almost a certainty that I'd want to work with the remainder to take down the clan in the mid/late game. If there is land to expand into across the sea I might consider it, but it is more likely that I focus on acquire territory on the homefront rather than going on some overseas adventure.

As to how to finally win the game, style points demand the Tower of Mastery, but that's only in the cards if I can secure enough mana nodes. It is also blatantly predictable. Other options are the flavors of conquest, if I see the opportunity there after the mid-game. This is FfH, so these options aren't exactly that easy to come by.

If you can't tell yet, I'm mostly playing this game by ear, with the primary goal of making it out of the early game uncrippled. Hence all the willingness to wheel and deal and more or less play an honest game for the time-being. So sorry if it's boring

[Mist]

So assuming worst case scenario - what's the defence plan against warren fuelled Clan axe rush?

Apart from praying Tredje and Mardoc get a bout of collective stupidity and bungle the war?

[Sareln]

So assuming worst case scenario - what's the defence plan against warren fuelled Clan axe rush?

Apart from praying Tredje and Mardoc get a bout of collective stupidity and bungle the war?

We're going crafting -> mining -> BW right now with a stopover at exploration probably after mining. Beat them to the tech (since they have to deal with a -10% malus) and have swords (axe replacement) with metal of my own. Once I'm at swords, pick up KotE for my haste-adepts (and enchanted blade if Iskender and I can work out that deal) and puff myself up real large like and convince Tredje & Mardoc that it's going to be one heckuva slog they can't afford. If they insist on the fight, then I guess I've got no choice but try to pick up construction or bring in one of their neighbors when all their troops are on the other side of the world. I'm still holding out hope that it won't come to that though because it will effectively take me out of the game. The best I can threaten is that it will take us both out of commission with no chance of recovery.

To be honest, if you look at the demographics, Iskender is looking awful squishy right now (lowest power rating by not a little). If I sign something with the Clan and Iskender isn't careful, he might find himself facing down Dwarves and/or Orcs. I should probably mention that sometime soon, I don't want him crumpling in the early game before I can take advantage of said crumbling!

[Thoth]

It's getting awful lonely in this thread here, would folks like to chime in a bit just to let me know that they're reading? :neenernee

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[serious] I don't see a settler in your current build plans am I missing something? or are you planning on an OCC for the near term? [/serious]

[Sareln]

Diplomacy:

Tredje didn't show up today for the chat. I send him another e-mail stating that the time today is also good tomorrow and move on. It is a little bit worrisome though.

In other news, Iskender and I are agreed and the NAP/Settling Agreement goes into place as we continue to negotiate on the training agreement.

[COLOR="Gray"]Hey

And thus the great Amurite and Sidar civilizations enter a long period of mutual friendship and prosperity!

I have those double Furs up north, should have them connected within a couple dozen turns.


Continuing the training deal:

In my first message I ignored the various other costs of getting a Shade. I still need to build a unit and pay it's upkeep until it reaches 26xp, which should take more than 26 turns due to necessary healing between fights. In fact, getting Shades from scratch this way could be barely profitable compared to conventional means of developing economy, so I'd probably have to combine this training with other means of getting xp (passive, civics, war).

How about a flat rate of 2gc per 1xp? This way the sooner we get the deal going the more you get from it. In case inflation gets out of hand (ie. it's more than 150%) we could increase it to 3gc/1xp.

You're probably right about mana, 12 great people is quite a lot. Let's cut it in half then, but keep the upper limit open in case we're make a longer deal - ie. me delivering mana for one of the Towers after the training is complete.

Iskender

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