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

[NobleHelium]

That barb spot looks pretty good to me. It's on your side of the river and there's probably some fertile land inside the working radius on the other side. And it's exactly on the sheep meridian, so doesn't violate the previous agreement technically.

[uberfish]

Yeah it's a bit of a grey area, I did tell calabim it was there. I am guessing it does have some workable tiles on the other side. We'll see next turn.

[uberfish]

Talking with Mist last night I discussed a few war options (oh, he found some copper between himself and Sciz and will settle that city)

We felt that the best thing to do from our point of view would be to focus on Sciz, at the moment the war is stalemated at Ithralia because there are a lot of dwarf warriors fortified on a hill, and Ilios can supply these with bronze at any time

Now, if Mist makes a move in force either north to attack Sciz' other city, or east into Malakim territory then Sciz's warrior stockpile represents a threat to retake Cotton Valley, so I would need to defend it (most likely with my own bronze warriors or swords)

I looked at the option of teching horseback riding first instead and sending a few horses to pillage Ilios' exposed plantations and so on. It's actually fairly tempting and horseback riding isn't a dead end tech in FFH anyway, but the trouble with it is horses are poor defensively and I'd lose the option to defend Cotton Valley. Cotton Valley also covers my own cities. And the defence against possible barbarian attack from Straatus is less secure. And I can't clear the jungle gem tile (Mist is apparently too busy to do that which is understandable as he upgraded a ton of workers to axemen.)

I decided to stick with bronze working -> cartography. Because cotton valley is close I shouldn't have to disrupt my economy by producing excessive warriors early.

I agreed to spread FoL to cotton valley for some culture to improve its defensibility.


Calabim (as I expected) raised the idea of attacking Lanun after the Malakim operation, apparently their strategy this game is going to be to attack anyone with a better economy than theirs which suits me for the moment. They have room for 7 decent cities, which means I have more space and can expect to overtake them economically later on (I might be doing the best in quantity, if not quality of expansion land) but I see no reason to tell them that, since they'd probably just start plotting against me.

Ilios remains chatty but likes to poke me for information while not revealing anything of his plans. He believes that Calabim and Balseraphs will fight each other in the near future, based on a misinterpretation of something Serdoa told him before. Since our current diplomatic status is "rivalry" I didn't bother to correct this impression.

[NobleHelium]

What was that structure on Straatus's tile in your old screenshot with the copper? Looks like a den of some sort. Maybe that influenced their city positioning?

[uberfish]

Sharp eyes. Yes that was a bear den. I think it's just coincidence the city popped up on top of it. Given the number of bears in this game, I suppose it could actually be a bear city.

[uberfish]

Yonna was founded and Straatus received a hawk scouting mission. Yonna costs about 5gpt in expenses, research rate down to 60%. At this point my unit upkeep of 9gpt is beginning to become somewhat of a concern. Some of these are animals which will be settled into cities, but they'll be replaced by workers.

Straatus: Adds Fish, sheep, 6 more grass/plains tiles + mana node control. Total 14 tiles added, including 6 tundra though. The site 3/3 NW of the capital which secures the mana node there was Rice, Ivory, +13 non-tundra tiles added total for comparison.

[uberfish]

Quiet turn. Carnival/4th worker completed EOT. Calabim river of blood is scheduled in ~6 turns and Bruti will play the size 2 holding game with a worker inserted into the queue when its food box fills up.

Had an irritating conversation with Ilios about open borders a couple of days ago where he claimed he didn't need the trade routes (because clearly 4 cities trading with 2 don't need more trade routes.) Seriously he's nice enough to chat with but I detect no intention whatsoever of forming a cooperative relationship in-game. Just fishing for information about my plans while offering nothing, or nonsensical comments such as "my GNP is inflated by culture" when everyone knows he switched out of creative and RoK gives no culture. Unless this attitude changes I will deliberately not tell him anything from now on unless it suits my purposes.

Anyway I offered the OB in game this turn and will see what happens.

Serdoa is up to 6 cities. Calabim are apparently feeling boxed in to the north. As shown in the earlier screenshot the area above Straatus has floodplains but also a mess of peaks, so most likely there'll be negotiation as to who gets Straatus and who gets the area above it.

[NobleHelium]

What's your preference for the division of that area?

[uberfish]

What's your preference for the division of that area?

I'd prefer that I get Straatus and they get the upper half for a few reasons

- mana
- the crab can be connected
- the area above would put Calabim and Doviello closer to contact
- I can make more use of tundra than Calabim can since ancient forest tundra isn't so bad a tile

[uberfish]

That's assuming the site above Straatus doesn't have something really nice that I missed with the hawk of course. Calabim said the lands weren't great (no particular reason to lie about this since I could find out.) But that bird was transferred back to the east, ready to map pirate lands next turn.