[SPOILERS]- Crazy Keelyn is trippin’ Balz: Bobchillingworth of the Balseraphs

[Bobchillingworth]

If I were to switch to the Veil, it would be without actually researching the Veil techs- I don't think that I'll get much out of actually following the faith compared to both Esus and OO. But you're right that slavery will be useful, and I can pick it up on the way to Esus, too. I'm starting to lean back now to just sticking with my original plan of beelining Esus, although I'm going to have to slow Bronze Working and Knowledge of the Ether somewhere in there too, unless I renew my NAPs. Lots of techs to chew through no matter how I look at it. Of course, I do have a nice worldspell to help me out. I'm not sure when to deploy it, honestly. Probably late-mid game, when I've got expensive units and buildings I want to complete. Either that or during the homerun stretch if I go for the Tower.

[DaveV]

Esus or OO because of their caster heroes? Why not just go KotE and use normal casters, with good old reliable death mana? Three skeletons per adept, then five spectres per mage. Even though you were beaten by a single unit in PBEM1, I think that's the exception. Better to have moderate strength troops sooner than to wait forever for your uber-unit.

[Bobchillingworth]

Esus for both the hero and the shrine, to buy me time to build up the kind of real military you describe. I could also try to kill someone with puppet-summoned Earth Elementals from Gibbon.



As I've noted before, OO is mostly for the priests and Stygian guard. Gotta have something to cover for those adepts, after all. Hemah is just a neat bonus, who arrives at a tech I'm going to want eventually anyway. Speaking of spellcasters, are specters worth it? With my entropy mana I could just use strength 5 pit beasts instead. They don't cause fear and they're kind of slow, but it would give me a lot more spell diversity. Fireballs are also pretty appealing.

[DaveV]

As I've noted before, OO is mostly for the priests and Stygian guard. Gotta have something to cover for those adepts, after all. Hemah is just a neat bonus, who arrives at a tech I'm going to want eventually anyway. Speaking of spellcasters, are specters worth it? With my entropy mana I could just use strength 5 pit beasts instead. They don't cause fear and they're kind of slow, but it would give me a lot more spell diversity. Fireballs are also pretty appealing.

Yeah, fireballs and pit beasts are both probably better than spectres; the big advantage of Death is that it's the only sphere with a level 1 summon; instead of waiting some 50-70 turns for your adepts to grow up, they're useful right away. If you can produce near-infinite numbers of skeletons, that may be enough of an army to tide you over. All you'd need is shadow mana to enable the tower of necromancy, and Blur is a very handy spell to have anyway.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah, shadow mana is another good reason to make sure I can get the Noctis. As for death, hopefully I can either get that from the Sheaim, who will have two sources thanks to controlling the Sepulcher.


Skeletons are okay (and go well with puppets, allowing even just a few adepts to fill any city with tons of fodder quickly), but they're expensive to just keep around. But I suppose if I'm only going to be summoning them for temporary defense in a pinch they're not a bad choice... yeah, that could def. make them worth it.


I've got a couple deals in the works already for my entropy mana, which has not surprisingly proven a hot commodity. Sareln has promised a loan of metamagic for it once we have a trade route, and SL wants it in exchange for life or enchantment. Stygian can use enchanted blades, right? I'm happy to loan both of them entropy, since it counters the Clan and Sheaim and I'm not planning on using any melee units myself except Stygian (well, and freaks and swordsmen before them). Too bad I can't drown Freaks, I'd love to get some Strong or Heroic Attack / Defense Stygian. I suppose that I can just mutate them, assuming you can mutate demonic units (I don't think I've ever even tried before). Or maybe I *can* drown them? I've never tried that before either, actually.

[Selrahc]

I suppose that I can just mutate them, assuming you can mutate demonic units (I don't think I've ever even tried before). Or maybe I *can* drown them? I've never tried that before either, actually.

No, and no.

Non-living units can not be mutated, with the exception of the event. If you want a mutant stygian guard you would need to upgrade from a mutated warrior.

Only warriors can be drowned(and the cost is fixed, which makes it a much better deal on slower game speeds).

An interesting little quirk, Drowns are undead units. The Stygians upgraded from them stay undead. In general Demonic is a better race, mainly due to the Destroy Undead immunity, but undead does have some advantages. Cannibalize is an undead only ability for example. Similarly, if you build a tower of necromancy then all your undead units will gain the Strong promotion.

[Bobchillingworth]

Neat info with that last bit. I know that you can get vampiric Stygian if you can gift vampirism to a bloodpet before drowning them. Someone once posted on Civfanatics about doing so as a strategy for Alexis, but it's not very practical outside of getting a handful of potentially scary gimmick units.

[Bobchillingworth]

Huzzah, Loki finished at EoT. I was going to send him off to explore the fogged land to my N / NE, but I'll get vision over the relevant tiles soon enough via border expansions at Hexam. I then toyed with the idea of sending him West, possibly to locate the Sidar and maybe even raze one of their cities. But now that I think about it, I might just get the most use having him sit on his ass in Jubilee and abuse summoner for Entertaining and Inspiring every turn. +1 happy, +2 beakers, and +4-6 gold in Jubilee probably maybe justifies his 4-turn, 120 hammer cost

[DaveV]

Entertain only gives you gold if you cast it in another player's city (it steals the gold from his piggy bank and puts it into yours). +1 happy for two turns is still significant, though, so I like this idea. You should get lingering +1 happiness for a number of turns equal to the number of castings of Entertain (i.e., if you cast Entertain every turn for 50 turns, +1 happiness should last 50 turns beyond your last casting).

[Bobchillingworth]

Not much has happened, but I'll most a couple update overview pics anyway:




The Empire:







You can see that I'm using Loki to keep three Inspirations going. Since he only needs to end his turn in Jubilee to sustain that Inspiration, I can run him a couple tiles toward either of the southern cities, summon a puppet, have the puppet enter the city and Inspire it, and then run back to Jubilee all within the same turn.


Next city will go at the "c" next to the "road" sign. You can also see a lizardman bothering Hexam- I hate him. He keeps squatting outside the city, preventing me from improving any more tiles. What a jerk.




And here are the latest demographics:





Obviously being first in everything that matters is excellent, but a lot of these numbers are artificially inflated due to my immense cultural output and the Godking hammer bonus at Jubilee which I'll soon be abandoning for Aristocracy. Still, I'm obviously the front-runner at the moment, and I have every reason to believe that my position will remain quite strong up at least until my NAP's expire. I should also be the first person to six cities, and quite likely the first to seven after that.



Little has occurred in diplomatic news, besides Sareln telling me that he believes that the Clan have picked up sailing recently. He thinks that they got a Son of the Inferno with the worldspell and are trying to rush it to their choke on him. Sons (or Disciplines of Acheron) only give 6,000 solider points for some reason, so it's entirely possible that they do have one (or two) going by the demographics. I'm more worried about them settling the southern island(s) however, since I'm counting on that land to boost my city count up to a game-winning quantity.