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

[Dantski]

its 1 tile to the east of that imaginary line

[uberfish]

as a curiosity it the death node you wanted to keep from the vampires on your side of the sheep or theirs

It's on my side and I don't think they are actually even aware of its existence yet (so many bears in the area, their scout that contacted me took the northern route)

[uberfish]

Disciple makes it to Evermore and spreads FoL. (I converted last turn for free.) 2nd Hunter, plains cottage at Evermore and FP farm at Hyll are completed. I'm going for a 3rd hunter who will probably be used more defensively and close to home while my first two do the animal capture/scouting duties to the east.

In the meantime the Great Lizard Standoff continues as the lizards refuse to take the warrior bait even at good odds.



I now have 2 hunters and 2 warriors in the area though so hopefully I can actually engage next turn. With both hunters there I transferred the Hawk over to one of them this turn. I didn't want to take the risk of losing the hawk as well in case of an unlucky combat roll when I had one hunter in the area. I should get full vision of all three of Sciz's cities next turn.

Combat wise, the objective is to get both hunters to 5 xp so they can take the Animal Capture promotion when it's ready in 6 or so turns then go capture the animals to the east before someone accidentally kills them.

I do want to squeeze a settler or two out of Evermore after regrowing from River of Blood, but after that I might run vertical growth there for a while as I'm about to get some happiness caps lifted there with things I'm going to get anyway... Right now the cap is 7. Religion civic + Temple + Carnival + Bear + Lion + Wolf + Gorilla + Gems + Wine would take me up to 16, and I can always cottage the river tiles to get the commerce bonus for now and bloom on top later. Fast vertical vs horizontal expansion is quite an interesting choice really... it's rare to get the opportunity to grow so large so early in vanilla civ4 unless you are some sort of Deity AI.

[uberfish]

Also I asked Sciz if he minded me founding 1E of the fire mana, but apparently his city's closer than I thought (it hasn't had any border expansions yet) and he asked me to go 1 row south, I agreed to this for now.

[uberfish]

World wonders

Grand Menagerie - Requires Festivals + 5 settled captured animals. +2 global happiness, free carnival in every city (yeah I have those on discount as Creative anyway but free stuff is free), free bard specialist. Very cheap at 80h once you have the animals. Definitely pursuing this as I have a head start in capturing animals by being the first player to train hunters. However because I haven't seen any tigers and it takes a while to get to Priesthood to spawn them at will, someone might be able to get lucky and grab it first.

Form of the Titan - Requires Warfare (prereqs Education and Bronze Working) and a level 6 unit. +2 global XP to newly trained units. Rather expensive to produce without Copper. The level 6 unit can be quite an obstacle but I have an Adventurer and Amelia will have a high-levelled unit from slaying Orthus. Her Lanun will probably be concentrating on Heron Throne / Great Lighthouse though. So I might have a good shot at this one. The hammer expense can be prohibitive without copper to double the production speed though, so after I get mining I'll evaluate. This wonder is particularly useful for Adepts to get them to Mage level faster, especially on quick speed as their innate XP gain isn't scaled with game speed. Since my neighbours accept my claim to a total of 4 mana nodes at this point, that's particularly attractive to me.

Pact of the Nilhorn - Requires Cartography. Spawns three Hill Giants but is rather expensive at 335h on quick. Pocketbeetle made very good use of them in PBEM1 as an early defensive deterrent and for covert ops. I don't really need the deterrent since I have March of the Trees, and I can capture spiders for covert ops. However, they do give the city bombard ability that elves are lacking pre-Fireball. This might be useful if I have to fight an offensive war at Priest tech level. I don't feel there is any justification for me to rush this wonder over 2 settlers + change, though.

Great Library - 234h without Marble discount. Requires 3 total libraries. Two free sages. +1 research per sage. Actually a nice wonder for elves since the cities eventually grow large enough to be forced to run specialists. The return on investment time just for the sages is pretty competitive too, but having to build three libraries is awkward. As a slow expander who won't pick up Slavery quickly, I'm disadvantaged in this respect and shouldn't expect to get it if someone else seriously wants it.

Catacomb Librarus - Knowledge of the Ether. +4 research, +4 culture, free mage guild in every city. 402h. Unless you're Sheaim with Planar Gates that benefit from the presence of additional buildings, there's really no need to have mage guilds all over the place. Just a wonder that's not as impressive as it appears at first glance in my opinion.

Heron Throne and Great Lighthouse - I don't plan to be building lots of coastal cities. Pirates will be after these anyway. Makes more sense to leave them to it.

Theatre of Dreams and Syliven's Perfect Lyre - Primarily useful to a SP cultural strategy. The +1 global happiness from Theatre of Dreams is just not worth the hassle of building 3 theatres and a wonder. They're very expensive and inefficient buildings in FFH.


National Wonders

Deruptus Brewing House - Gives 2 Ale luxuries and +10% raw commerce per unique grain resource. Costs 160h, only slightly more than a settler. I have corn/wheat already connected and can claim rice. Since the commerce bonus is multiplicative with the Academy and God-King bonuses, once I have this built and rice connected my capital could be running 130% * 150% = 195% on research and gold. This is what makes vertical expansion quite an attractive prospect since 15 tiles at my capital would be producing the commerce output of 25+ tiles at regular cities without the city upkeep costs.


Conclusion: Definitely pursue grand menagerie. Consider chasing Form of the Titan if there's copper. Get Deruptus at a convenient time, probably after rice connected and some more cottage growth. Other wonders are low priority, can be picked up if opportunity permits, but I won't be going out of my way early to chase them.

[uberfish]

So after some updates focused mainly on Elven lands, this turn's update is going to be about what's going on in the rest of the world. My forces moved one tile further up onto a newly grown Ancient Forest and sent the hawk out:



What a mess. One of the lizards has moved to a hill adjacent to Doviello forces. 2 of their beastmen, 2 scouts and 3 workers are in the area, part of the army being sent to invade Luchuirp. Mist is apparently planning to take the southern route but these lizards will have to be dealt with somehow if he does. I still can't get decent odds on the lizard next to my forces because I'd have to attack cross-river and 1 warrior sacrificing at 0.5% odds probably won't do any damage. If it moves off its forest next turn, I should be able to use my forestwalking bonus to successfully attack it. I'm holding the ancient forest so the lizard can't defend there instead. (Ancient forest defence bonus is 50% compared to regular forest 25%.)

I've promoted one hunter to combat I and left the other unpromoted. If it comes down to finishing off a badly wounded lizard, I'll use the unpromoted one to do it and hopefully get more XP then heal up with the combat I promotion.

In dwarf territory, Barnaxus is standing unpromoted on top of a barrow solo... seriously Sciz are you going to explore it with your hero? I mean yes you can rebuild Barnaxus, but it's really a hassle.

Meanwhile, the close city has been revealed as Cotton Valley, an aptly named city with 3 river cotton plantations generating 5 commerce each for the Financial dwarves and a mana node.

I sent this information off to Mist advising that he should probably take and keep Cotton Valley for himself. He is in the worst economic position right now and I don't think he can really afford to bypass the possible gain from an anti-dwarf campaign to go after Ilios immediately.

Relations with Calabim are improving since we agreed to the temporary NAP + settling agreement and we're exchanging more information now. Darrell told me they'd lost a total of 7 bloodpets to barbarians/animals so far (ouch) and that their 3rd city and world spell should be going down in 3 turns. In the beginning they viewed me as a dangerous opponent based on reputation and civ choice, but right now they're concerned about Balseraphs who are closer neighbours and have expanded to 4 cities + Loki very quickly.

Also, apparently everyone seems to be concerned about Ilios' rapid growth and high GNP, as he is leading both the food and GNP demographics. It seems likely that an early runaway won't be as tolerated as Pocketbeetle was in PBEM1; in general the higher neighbour count on our map makes it more likely that someone will be willing and able to act to stop someone taking an early lead and snowballing from there. Diplomatically, it may be good to be in the middle of the pack for a while.

[uberfish]

On the computer turn the lizards refuse to attack and just continue prowling around the jungle instead:



however I can finally attack them without a river penalty. My forces: two hunters with 2XP, one already promoted to combat I the other saving its promotion, and two 0XP warriors.

Elves don't get attack bonus into jungle so my combat 1 hunter has poor odds. So I decide to send one of my 2 unpromoted warriors to soften the first lizard up.

3.8%. Warrior dies, but takes the lizard's strength down to 3.3. My combat I hunter has about 70% odds and gets the kill. So far so good. I have one more warrior and hunter left so I use the forestwalk bonus to get across the river and attack with the second warrior:



red lines = warriors, yellow = hunters

The warrior gets in more damage this time, and my unpromoted hunter crosses the river, flies a hawk mission to Ithralia, attacks at 95%, wins the fight then takes Combat I to heal. Success!

(Yeah I know it's a step down if you've been following PBEM1 but we have to start somewhere)

Calendar hasn't quite finished (one turn remaining) but I put a turn of deficit research into animal husbandry in case I have to finish it and capture the rare gorilla/wolf in a hurry if they head to the NW this turn and end up in striking range of Mist's incoming units. Mist'll take 3 turns to get to where the animals could hit him and I can have AH done by then. My hunters are at 6 and 7 xp from the Lizard fight so they'd be able to take Subdue Animal immediately. Should the animals move off to the east, I'll go ahead and finish calendar first since agrarianism's worth about 3 food per turn.

Scouting revealed yet more cotton in Dwarf lands at Ithralia and two unpromoted warriors guarding the capital, Sciz clearly doesn't suspect anything yet. You guys get to watch the action from a relatively unbiased observer perspective ;p

Amusing note from Sciz:
[COLOR="DarkOrange"]
Hello! I am wondering if there are any barbarian groups near your
lands that I could train my Barnaxus on. My source seems to have
depleted, and it would be great if there are some lizardmen or skeles
near you that you don't mind me attacking. This would just further
cement our great relations, I think, and I would help you in a similar
way if you ever want something like that.

Your neighbor,
Sciz, CEO of Ithralia Golem Tech Ltd.[/COLOR]

Seriously?? I wouldn't be offering my neighbours a golden opportunity to gank Barnaxus if I was playing Luchuirp... anyway I mentioned that I remembered seeing some bears to his west. Barnaxus is actually missing in action right now, he must have headed north.

If Sciz accuses me of plotting with Doviello against him, my excuse will be that I saw Mist's units with my hawk, confronted him over their intentions and he offered to invade Sciz instead if I kept quiet about it. We don't want to appear to be acting in a close alliance so early in the game, it would draw diplomatic heat from other players.

[uberfish]

Doviello are on the march. The two beastmen are the advance guard and leaving first. Scouts and workers are probably sitting on the mana node and hoping the bear moves out of the way. They'll upgrade when they reach their target to avoid demographic scouting of the rush.

The gorilla is heading back towards the NW so I had to keep researching animal husbandry to make sure I'll be the one to fight it. The tech will finish end of next turn. Wolf is out of danger.

Workers are busy toiling away at the road network. The 3rd city will probably be just south of the fire mana and it should be pre-connected and have a reagent plantation waiting.

Not sure about the 4th city still, I might put it at one of the possible double-wine choices. Still not great but the ability for new cities to pay for themselves quickly is really the limit on early horizontal expansion since I am required to keep teching at a reasonable pace to get to Priesthood. Without good access to commerce specials it's hard to sustain a rapid expansion pace. Wouldn't be surprised if my start position is a clear #7 of #7 in this regard what with the river cotton and dye clusters easily accessible to my northern neighbours... (insert mapmaking complaint here) Anyway the floodplain/wheat site would need aristocracy to really shine and I'm still undecided on that.

[uberfish]

Ok here's a screenshot packed with a lot of information:

- the gorilla is continuing on its course (right-centre of the map near the sugar), animal husbandry will be done next turn for my hunters to intercept and capture it.

- Doviello scout/worker stack is visible up top. One of their scouts is badly wounded, which means it got lucky and killed a bear. As those units 2-move Mist can swing them back to the southern route to meet up with his beastmen if he wants without the second bear being able to stop him.

- Evermore started a settler (temporarily being capped at size 7 while I wait for agrarianism+religion double switch on t68 when calendar's available and/or Calabim to get on with casting their peskyr world spell already)

City 3 will go on red or yellow dot, a worker is there preparing the connecting road and plantation. to help myself decide what to do, I drew out the fat cross of each location excluding squares overlapped with Evermore.

Red site:

- adds 15 workable tiles (the fire mana doesn't count here)
- plains hill +1 hammer and defence bonus
- no fresh water with 6 jungles contributing early game unhealth
- is 3N2E of the capital which always has a bad feel about it

Yellow site:

- adds 17 tiles, but some would overlap with potential further expansion sites to the east (green/purple dots)
- 3rd ring claims sugar
- fresh water
- no hill, which for a border city always has a bad feel about it too

Now, I don't think this thread has been anywhere near as interactive as it should be. So I'm interested to hear which site you lurkers would pick. (Assume that the NAP with Mist to turn 150 will hold.) Note this isn't a democracy game or anything. I'm just curious what you guys would do.

Actually, let's do an easy quiz:



This would be a 5th/6th city site. Red dot is plains hill, blue is grass. See if you can answer these questions:

1) How many workable tiles does each dot add to the empire?
2) How do the two sites compare defensively?
3) Where would you settle?

... and the southwest is the horrible monster which probably doesn't have one right answer:



so I'll just ask

4) What factors would you take into account when comparing these settling plans?

and the bonus question

5) With animal husbandry about to complete, do you think there'll be horses around?

[NobleHelium]

I haven't been saying much since I'm not quite sure what the lurker rules are.

For the quiz:
Red adds 13 tiles, and is more defensible because it is farther away from the coast. This means there will be more room for roads for Mist to travel on for a potential attack path on the Calabim without having to connect those roads to the city and thus the rest of the empire. Blue adds 14 tiles.