Auric Ulvin restores winter to Erebus [SPOILERS]

[Mardoc]

Here's your start. Let me know if you spot any errors.

[Ellimist]

Thanks Mardoc!

So I've been contemplating where the best place to put my capital is, and there are three spots that seem the strongest.




Red settles in place and gets the +1 hammer from being on a plains hill, as well as being the only place the shade can settle on the first turn. It doesn't really have any strong advantages over the others, except

Blue is the strongest for hammers. It picks up several hammer tiles.

Yellow is the strongest for commerce. It has the most river tiles and is the only possible spot that can build Deruptus and also work the gold.

I'm not sure which spot to pick, and I'm not sure whether to settle my shade as a sage or engineer, either. I think I'll delay a day to think it over, and hopefully everyone's okay with that.

[Ellimist]

I picked the river spot(yellow), and will most likely settle the shade as a sage.

Other than the gold, the rest of the map that I can see seems to have more hammers than commerce available, so I can settle my second city for food and hammers and focus the capital toward science.

[Ellimist]

[Ellimist]

Just lost my worker and a C1 warrior to a skeleton, but at least the wines were hooked up first and I still have two warriors(5 and 9 exp).

I seem to be surrounded by barbarian lairs.

[Qgqqqqq]

Ouch

[Ellimist]

Yeah. Sorry for the complete lack of updates, but so far nothing has been going my way. I even managed to forget to reassign my citizen back to the wines after killing the skeleton, pointlessly costing me 3 commerce for no gain at all. (3 foodhammers went toward a worker either way)

It's too early to know anything for sure, but I expect that Brian and DaveV will have much stronger starts than the rest of us, and later on the expansive civs will have a better shot at catching up than I will. My primary economic advantage is the ability to settle anywhere and turn it into productive terrain, but I don't know yet if that will actually be useful or not on this map.

A huge part of FFH, and civ in general, is picking the right leader/civ for the map, and in the past I've done pretty well for that. (Charadon on a pretty crowded map, Jonas on a huge mirrored map, Calabim on a watery map) This time, not so much. I think the strongest trait here is going to be Barbarian, and the next is likely to be Expansive or Raiders.

[Ellimist]

[Mardoc]

Yay Pythagoras!

[Ellimist]

I'll try to get back in the habit of updating. I'm actually doing fairly well lately. Pictures soon.

I've been the #1 GNP for a little while now thanks to a Deruptus/Academy play at Two(my capital). The city just west of Two, Five, is also working 5 cottages for now until Two is ready for them later. I'm using Aristocracy primarily, but may switch to something else later on.

The Hippus have something like double my crop yield after their Drama-Sanitation fueled snowball, and nobody else is even close to them. I just finished Construction and expect to get Sanitation soon, which I expect to be a big help. I was tempted to go for the Titan after unlocking it with my Orthus-killing warrior, but it was risky and Sanitation is more important anyway.

Three, my city SW of Two, has taught me some lessons about Temples of the Hand. Apparently workers take 6 turns to build farms on ice tiles (vs 4 turns on grass/plains). I think that should probably be cancelled out by the winterborn promotion in a future EITB version. East of Three, Eleven is currently choked by tundra, but should be decent after I freeze it over. I'm definitely going to pre-improve several of the tiles before then.

I'm working on pushing NE with my next cities, but there are so many bears in the area that it's been tough. I just finished a hunting lodge at Seven(strong hammer city) and plan to start capturing the bears for culture soon. I haven't gotten KotE for Adepts yet, nor my Priests of Winter. I just haven't had a need yet nor hammers to spare.

I have the basics of a long term strategy figured out, but I don't know how viable it will be. The toughest part will be to avoid falling too far behind the Hippus (or anyone else) so that my weapons remain relevant.

In more immediately relevant news, a stack of four lizardmen showed up near Seven last turn. I should be able to handle them with only minor disruptions to my workers.