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

[uberfish]

Well, found another resource special, of course it's another off river grain - at least it's corn which is marginally better than wheat under Agrarianism's +1f -1h. No incense though. Seems there's a fairly large expanse of desert to the right.

I'll most likely be settling here next turn for corn + 2floodplains unless something extraordinary turns up. I can work with this, cottage both grassland forests and the river plains marked in blue, have a commerce oriented capital and settle the red dot next to the original settler start point early to specialize in military production. Obviously, the desert to the east is a concern.

Might be killed by a rush for not founding on a hill of course, I'm willing to take that risk as there's only 1 rush civ in the game, if I get rushed it's because my diplomacy failed.

Mahala's 0 point mystery is solved, the doviello don't have a starting tech (which is apparently worth 11 points.) Neither they nor Amelia settled in place so there are at least 2 other players unhappy with their starts.

[uberfish]

Moved the bottom scout 2NE in case there was a hidden resource 2 east of the red dot (nope), then the top scout north. It occurred to me that since I've moved 4 spaces north it would be a good idea to send the top scout in that direction to see who's out there. No resources found, but picked up 30 gold from a hut.

I briefly considered making a run for the northeast blue circle with the settler to see what was there, then realised that the original settler start position was blue circled too and it is poor, so I decide to found where the settler stood at the end of last turn:



Annoyingly, it turns out there's a reagent tile I could have gotten for the city by moving 1NE at no further time cost if I'd taken a slightly different scouting pattern earlier. It's a decent early pickup at 3/0/4 with a plantation, equivalent to the 2/1/4 of a full grown forest town. However I'd lose a floodplain and also add some bad jungle and desert hill tiles to the city, which means it's really not that big a deal.

Switched civics to Nationhood. This gives +10% military production, which doesn't sound like much but because of the way rounding works you always get at least one hammer if your net bonus is positive. This means I can work a 1/2/0 forest and produce a quick speed 16h warrior in 4 turns.

Decided to try my hand at some demographic analysis:

Doviello are up to 35 points equal with the other civs, which means they gained a hut tech... not really what anyone else wants to see, the rush civ getting an accelerated start.



Soldier count: 13000 power rating would have to be Doviello (who start with the str 4 Lucian unit, and two warriors) They'll almost certainly remain top of this statistic so watching it will indicate their attack plans. As the only civ which starts with 2 scouts, I rank worst here with 4000 power; no one has managed to get their units killed exploring a lair yet.

GNP: Well this one is worrying... how on earth does someone have 17 GNP already while everyone's at size 1? The way it seems to work is just to add up your gold/science/culture outputs. For example my palace produces 8 commerce and 2 culture, creative gives 2 culture and the city tile gives 1 culture giving 13 GNP as shown on the demo-screen.

But there's no tile you can work for 4c at the start of the game is there to get up to 17 is there? Hmm. Creative civ with Dragon Bones (2/1/4 unique feature) maybe? I doubt SevenSpirits would have given someone access to that on turn 1 though. Creative + settle on wine + work river gold would do the trick, but again I doubt the mapmaker would let anyone start with that... Most likely, someone has gotten very lucky with events and gotten a resource improved for them for free, or the event where you pay some gold for a free great prophet.

So I'll generally be scouting east and north. Tech plan at the moment is Agriculture -> Ancient Chants -> Mysticism -> Education -> Hunting -> Way of the Forests, but this isn't set in stone.

[T-hawk]

Switched civics to Nationhood. This gives +10% military production, which doesn't sound like much but because of the way rounding works you always get at least one hammer if your net bonus is positive. This means I can work a 1/2/0 forest and produce a quick speed 16h warrior in 4 turns.

Really? That's not how rounding ever works in standard Civ 4. Everything rounds down; corporations are the only exception that rounds up.

GNP: Well this one is worrying... The way it seems to work is just to add up your gold/science/culture outputs.

If a civ is researching a tech with an arrow prerequisite, it gets a bonus of 20% to beakers, which shows up in GNP. Also each civ gets 1 free beaker per turn (as long as it has at least one city.)

[uberfish]

Really? That's not how rounding ever works in standard Civ 4. Everything rounds down; corporations are the only exception that rounds up.

Oh wait, you're right - the extra hammer I'm getting isn't because of Nationhood but because the palaces in FFH give a free hammer that I hadn't really noticed before.

If a civ is researching a tech with an arrow prerequisite, it gets a bonus of 20% to beakers, which shows up in GNP. Also each civ gets 1 free beaker per turn (as long as it has at least one city.)

Ah, thanks for clearing that up in a non-spoily fashion, it seems that the analysis in my last post was terrible Could be Malakim working a flood plain researching mysticism or something.

[Dantski]

How sure are you about the Doviello getting a free tech? I know tech points for relatively early techs in FFHPBEM1 were lower so did you work it out by using population points + wonder points then deduce the rest was free tech?

[uberfish]

Doviello start with 0 points instead of 11 because they don't have a tech, when everyone else settled they went up to 35. So the fact that doviello have 35 points instead of 24 indicates they got a hut tech (which would be worth the same as everyone else's first level starting techs) the same turn they settled.

[uberfish]

Just scouting this turn, guess what I found 4 tiles from my capital:



This is a fire mana source and also a super-dungeon, it can be explored like the other dungeons on the map and I believe it only gives really good stuff (free techs, GPs, that sort of thing) or really bad stuff (some nasty monster.) Needless to say this one poses a bit of a dilemma...

In other news Evermore's border expansion revealed another resource to the west just outside the city borders, seems I've gotten somewhat unlucky with the resource placement and scouting this game... Anyway it's an ivory tile, so the good news is it's +1 happiness available on an on-path tech, Hunting.

Luchuirp picked up an 11 point tech. Maximum production is 5 while everyone still has a size 1 city and no one's working a 0/3 plains forest hill, so maybe they also used their world spell to get a free engineer on turn 1.

[Dantski]

Hmm thats an awkward placement for a super dungeon, I imagine the other players wouldn't feel too bad about exploring it if they have no particular desire to be friends with Elves.

I suppose it'd be great if you could plant a city close to it before someone who's happy to pop it finds it.

[uberfish]

Hmm thats an awkward placement for a super dungeon, I imagine the other players wouldn't feel too bad about exploring it if they have no particular desire to be friends with Elves.

I suppose it'd be great if you could plant a city close to it before someone who's happy to pop it finds it.

I guess there's also an argument for just exploring the thing before anyone else does, if I'm going to be exposed to the risk anyway I might as well be the one getting any potential reward right?

[pocketbeetle]

Doooooooooo itttttttttttttttt!