[SPOILERS] Woof! Woof! Bad dog! No biscuit! Charadon of the Doviello

[Ellimist]

[SIZE="7"]Turn 37[/SIZE]


I found a tribal village last turn that was probably meant for SareIn:

I can't really imagine a result that would have been better than this:

Except, perhaps, this:

I should start buying lottery tickets or something. This is getting ridiculous.
Or maybe it's a gift from the spirits of the Khazad.


I'm a little apprehensive about this. I mean, of course I appreciate good fortune wherever I encounter it; it's not like I was hoping for a useless result. But it's getting to a point where if I win, it will feel a little hollow, like I was carried by luck or something.

• This map is very fertile and the area I started in was very nice. Due to my barbarian trait, other players have not been able to settle the map as extensively as I have.
  
• I popped agriculture from a hut early on.
  
• I got a map from another hut to a conveniently located victim, who didn't send any explorers in my direction.
  
• I only lost one wolf eliminating Bob, which was better than 90+% of my sims.
  
• Mist's scout appeared in the perfect place at the perfect time for my unit to get the shock promotion.
  
• When the critical battle came, I was able to kill the Calabim's shock defender before it could get 5 exp. And it only cost me one wolf.
  
• My best attacker continued to kill one defender a turn and remained healthy enough(with promotions) to keep it up.
  
• Now I get mining from a hut.

Even the good/bad luck other people have gotten has favored me.

• Ichabod and Bob both sent their scouts away from me and neither detected my forces until I wanted them to.
  
• SareIn was eliminated very early by Ichabod, but Ichabod was unable to keep the city.
  
• Mist popped a great artist from a lair and settled him, giving him an inflated score due to land points. At certain times, I might have lost my barbarian peace if this hadn't happened.

[Ellimist]

Cartography is in T38 and I revolted to city states. I set research to 0% for now. I want to avoid letting my score rise too much, and if I build up enough gold I can take advantage of possible favorable events.

My wolf up north popped a graveyard this turn after the hut last turn and got a skeleton. It moved on toward the west, but the east area (with Brigit) is probably worth exploring also.

My tech path will also have to be revised now that I have mining, I'll probably go for Bronze working. Another possibility is RoK, but I'm inclined to just go for Sons of Asena and bronze weapons.

One worker I captured from Ichabod is building a cotton plantation at Santa Monica, and the other is building a road toward River Heights. My two native workers just finished a floodplains farm at River Heights and will road toward the copper next. River Heights and Santa Monica are building more workers. Now that I can start improving Innsmouth, I'll build a worker down there as soon as it reaches size 4(1 turn).

[Ellimist]

Looks like we have a little blitz going.

T39 played, I sent Jackman and Lucian toward River Heights instead of Mist. I still have wolves exploring out there, but I want to get them bronze weapons when it comes in.

0% gold is still on, adopting city states brought my total city maintenance down from 11 to 4. Units still cost me 7, and agrarianism costs 1, but I'm gaining 26 gpt at 0% now.

T40 played, Lucian passed by the Guardian of Pristin Pass and apparently activated it. Hopefully the Gargoyles will ignore me. They don't appear to be hidden nationality so they should go bother Mist.

[Ellimist]

Okay, we're up to turn 58.

To summarize...

I found Mist and scouted his area out pretty well. He managed to kill the scout but his units were kept pretty busy with barbarians and I didn't lose any wolves. He has a lot of water in and around it, so if I want to go for cultists they could mess him up pretty well.

Mist and I both settled a city, Mist went north from his capital, and I settled Levia Overlook at the Dragon Bones hill.

I pulled back Lucian and Jackman to River Heights until Bronze working came in. Once they had bronze weapons, I upgraded Jackman to SoA and sent them both(plus a beastman) west.

All the barbarians that were moving toward Ichabod stopped moving completely after he was eliminated. They're still facing northeast but just staying in place. Orthus spawned T50 and I found him southeast of my capital near the coast. He isn't moving, either.

Innsmouth finished Dereptus Brew House and my workers finished roads between all my cities. River Heights is currently working on Pact of the Nilhorn. I've increased production significantly with mines and will soon mine the hill tile with the ancient forest

[novice]

Nice pace...

[Ellimist]

Okay, we played through turn 66. Not bad for one day.

I'll put up some pictures later, but for now, the highlights:

• Levia Overlook is now working all three of its commerce tiles and my commerce is looking a lot better.
  
• I'm having a tougher time keeping my score down. I've accumulated over 300 gold and just started researching animal husbandry. I still haven't researched stuff like ancient chants, because of the score it would give me. Plus if I start having cities expand borders, I'll be gaining more "surprise" score increases from land.
  
• Mist built Gilden Silveric so I expect he will have mostly archers defending and the wolf rider plan will be good against them.
  
• Other than Gilden, Mist's power graph has been pretty quiet. I have my three strong melee units(Lucian, Jackman, beatman) out of his view near Yggdrasil. I'm hoping he'll avoid a major buildup until I seem threatening.
  
• Barbarian cities are appearing all over the map.
  
• I have an army of workers(13) building a network of roads toward Mist. I am not sure if I'll upgrade them or stick to wolf riders.
  
• Pact of the Nilhorn is coming along in River Heights. Three giants will be a big help, plus they can bombard city defenses, and I expect that to be significant.
  
• Fellowship of Leaves still hasn't been founded. I guess Mist isn't prioritizing it.

[Ellimist]

Okay overall, militarily, the plan hasn't changed a whole lot.

I had reconsidered whether to hire goblin fort wolf riders once I had bronze working. The gold investment would be considerable and it wouldn't leave a lot of room for a plan B. However, when I saw that Mist built Gilden Silveric, I figured that he would be relying on archers for defense, and HBR made sense again.

So animal husbandry is in, and horses are in River Heights' BFC(shared with Levia, actually). I'll probably have those hooked up before HBR arrives. I could research HBR in 4 turns, but I'm going to wait to let it finish until I'm not in danger of passing the Mist * 1.5 score barrier.

I'm piling up a lot of gold already due to having to slow my research down(I've been doing this for 25+ turns) and once I have HBR I'll go back to doing this. I don't know how much I'll try to collect before going on the offensive.

When I do attack, I may have to be careful about taking his cities. If I take out one of his two cities, his score may fall enough for me to lose barbarian peace. If that happens, I'll directly lose access to more wolf rider reinforcements and indirectly lose access to all other reinforcements(because they'd have to fight their way across the map.) I may start with a just going for a super-choke. I might try to make both his cities capturable in the same turn or something. Or I may just try to raze Evermore and hope that it's enough to seal the game in my favor.

[Amelia]

Can we get an updated map of the situation, like your cities, your worker army and their roads, the goblin fort, and the state of Mist's cities?

[Ellimist]

We're doing another blitzy session today, and Mist won't be available for another one for quite awhile(at least 18 days.)
I'm hoping we get up to turn 90 or so.

I'll definitely give updates going through turns 30-87. A nice thing about PBEM is the ability to reload previous turns for pictures. I was doing that anyway so that I could remove sign clutter from screenshots.

EDIT: We got to turn 87. We could have gone further but I'm preparing for war and things are getting more complicated, requiring more elaborate planning than the past 46 turns. I told Mist I had to take care of some RL stuff(true) and we called it a day. I'll reserve some placeholder posts to share the highlights of our extended blitz, then get the war plans posted.

I've nearly scouted the entire map as well. I have 2 wolves working on finishing it up, but the important parts are known. I'll post a revised "large map" image when I have the chance.

[Ellimist]

Okay, I've updated my turn 31 and 37 posts into proper turn reports.

I'll post my upcoming military plans and then summarize 50 turns of blitzy cold war as soon as I can get to it.