Commodore David the Fifth of the horsie dudes.

[DaveV]

Are we, possibly, a bit doomed here? That's a huge mass of warriors, if both Alpha and Bravo toss those mega-swarms even a vine will go down.

First of all, the vines, with all their drill promotions, are pretty much invulnerable to barb warriors. It will take a stack of very strong barbs or a human player with some good units, collateral, and Blur to take them out.

The normal barb behavior is to build a stack of 4 units, which form a kill team and beeline to the nearest player city. In a Monarch+ difficulty game, the built warriors are pretty easy to tell apart from spawned barbs, because the ones built in a city get free promotions (1 at Monarch/Emperor, 2 at Immortal/Deity). Since this game is Prince difficulty, there's no easy way to tell the built barbs from the spawned ones; my guess is that most or all of those warriors are pre-placed, probably with city defender AI, which would make them stay in the city and defend.

Did you reach some sort of accomodation with the Vampires? I thought you were trying to kill their scout, and it looks as though it's been in range for several turns now.

[Commodore]

Did you reach some sort of accomodation with the Vampires? I thought you were trying to kill their scout, and it looks as though it's been in range for several turns now.

Sort of. Gaspar and I have tossed back and forth the idea of killing off Jkaen at least, possibly Amelia as well if these turns don't pick up. Right now it looks like they'll support us attacking Jkaen if we help them kill Amelia. Kind of wandering away from the original capture the flag point, but frankly, we'd both rather play in the hole points-wise at 1t/day rather than this 3t/week crap.

*edit, although as nice as these starting lands are, successfully capturing Jkaen's lands could be a very nice thing. I can use his coves, right, just not make more of them?

[DaveV]

Sort of. Gaspar and I have tossed back and forth the idea of killing off Jkaen at least, possibly Amelia as well if these turns don't pick up. Right now it looks like they'll support us attacking Jkaen if we help them kill Amelia. Kind of wandering away from the original capture the flag point, but frankly, we'd both rather play in the hole points-wise at 1t/day rather than this 3t/week crap.

Ah, I thought that was a joke when you mentioned it. Do you really want to reduce the game to three players at this point? Won't that kind of water down the competition? Can we recruit teammates for the slowpokes?

*edit, although as nice as these starting lands are, successfully capturing Jkaen's lands could be a very nice thing. I can use his coves, right, just not make more of them?

Yes.

[Commodore]

Ah, I thought that was a joke when you mentioned it. Do you really want to reduce the game to three players at this point? Won't that kind of water down the competition? Can we recruit teammates for the slowpokes?

Maybe? Next long delay I'm going to propose it. It's not a sure thing and we're not moving on it yet, but this pace is getting kind of ridiculous.

[HidingKneel]

I'd say with an early disciple it doesn't matter too much what the religion is. You can't unlock the real goodies without researching the relevant techs anyway. The main difference is what shrine you get to build, and these give mostly the same benefits (except for Nox Noctis, but I don't think you can pop Esus from a dungeon? At least, I've never seen it myself). And as far as mana types are concerned, I'd say getting early access to water is kind of nice. (Nature less so; plus we already have it.)

I don't thing those warriors are much to worry about, either on offense (the vines will stop them easily) or on defense.

Do we want to zip home with that lizardman? It would be a shame to lose him; might be worthwhile fortifying in that jungle for a few turns, while the disciples help him heal up.

[Commodore]

Do we want to zip home with that lizardman? It would be a shame to lose him; might be worthwhile fortifying in that jungle for a few turns, while the disciples help him heal up.

Ah, recall that useless healing salve so long ago? It had a use.

[Commodore]

Bit of a quiet turn today. As usual, when I start seriously speculating about killing off the save holders the save starts booking it around. Scouts scout, workers work, etc. I was right about the river, thankfully, so the new city is hooked up.



The disciple train is still being shepherded by our tough lizardman Fiirkan, the vampire scout is diverting south to make contact with Amelia, but as important as that is, getting these religions home safe and fast is the priority.



As per HK's suggestion I tossed Religion onto the pile as well in the revolt. Nice civic upgrade, over-all, giving us good hammers, excellent gold, and considerably more food at the cost of only a little more maintenance cost. Prince/Cylindrical isn't going to be crushing at all.



The overall hammer bonus for making this settler here is insane, so I opted to keep building it as there will be the good 3/1/0 deer tile and 2/0/5 riverside village tile for the new city to work even sans worker support. Might as well do what Exp does best, right?



Next growth cycle, up goes an elder council.

[Commodore]

Played turn 37, not much to say really. The merry train of religious units and a vampire scout are merrily still following the lizard. I think he's starting to get a bit creeped out by them all.



At home it's all going pretty well, the settler pretty close to heading to Outskirts, the workers doing their things. See last turn, just without the anarchy.



Making 36gpt, so who wants to bet the engineer even pops up in two turns with the treasury at 74?

[Commodore]

Hey potentially maybe sort of a little bit of action! Hopefully in the "cakewalk" category here, actually. Dunno what's with the odd graphic glitch with all the skellies though.



Our leading lizard managed to find a dead end, alas. I think we're bypassing Amelia at the moment, but that's worth it to get the boys home in time to be useful. As the hawk flies, we are soooo close, but it's going to be a long slog thanks to the peaks and fallout.



You might notice the gpt went up slightly this turn, I managed to worry myself with talk about falling just short of the event cost, so I worked the newly build winery in Return. Next turn it'll grow with the farm to work, then it's winery + mine while making monument.



As a result, our demos are looking up nicely. How's this for GNP and MFG? Still getting blown out of the water on crop yield, but that's gong to remain until hunting at least.



Nice, 1t/day rate for the last 5 days!

[DaveV]

Dunno what's with the odd graphic glitch with all the skellies though.

Usually due to having unit animations turned off.