[SPOILERS] - Tredje and Mardoc are Sheelba of the Clan of Embers

[Tredje]

Hey Mardoc!

I apologize for not replying to your last post earlier. I have been a bit preoccupied mentally the last couple of days, but I hope to have regained my focus now.

Standing Stones, eh? Well, it's not Remnants of Patria, but it'll do I guess. I took a look at the Earth spells, and they all seem moderately useful. Could come in handy at some point.

I think it is safe to say that if I haven't played the save before 24 GMT, I won't play it that day, and you can go ahead and play it. But just to give you a picture of how rarely I miss saves, I can tell you that in PBEM 12 we have been playing for about 2 months and I have only missed the save once due to internet issues. So it should be an infrequent occurence. Still, if the save should come during the early GMT nighttime, go right ahead and play.

I just played the third turn and I was advised to check out our Civics. At the moment we are in Religion, but for when we start training troops I think we will want to be in Nationhood. What do you think about switching to Nationhood right after the Worker is done? I'm not sure the 10% bonus production will speed up a Scout or a Warrior, so I am probably going to have to try it out in a Single Player game tomorrow.

[Tredje]

Actually, I just did a small test in Single Player, and it seems that the production time of a Goblin (5 turns) and a Warrior (8 turns) with 2 production and 3/4 turns with 4 production remained the same after adopting Nationhood. I'm not sure of the mechanics, but is it safe to assume that we won't notice any increased prodcution until the 10% bonus from Nationhood amounts to 1 production, i.e. only at 10 production or higher?

[Mardoc]

Standing Stones, eh? Well, it's not Remnants of Patria, but it'll do I guess. I took a look at the Earth spells, and they all seem moderately useful. Could come in handy at some point.

Yes, precisely. I doubt it would have been worth creating an Earth node, short of aiming for the Tower of Elements, but it's handy to have. Plus it improves our chances of gaining new resources in mines.

This all assumes we're spread out enough to grab it without trouble; the map might be crowded for all we know.

I think it is safe to say that if I haven't played the save before 24 GMT, I won't play it that day, and you can go ahead and play it. But just to give you a picture of how rarely I miss saves, I can tell you that in PBEM 12 we have been playing for about 2 months and I have only missed the save once due to internet issues. So it should be an infrequent occurence. Still, if the save should come during the early GMT nighttime, go right ahead and play.

Glad to hear it. Yes, I was mostly thinking in terms of it being late to arrive, but only time will tell how often that occurs. In my other games, the PBEM 11 save arrives somewhere in a 5-6 hour window that's sometimes after bed for me, while the FFHPBEM3 save arrives like clockwork several hours before I'm free to play it. I got lucky to have SevenSpirits as a teammate in PBEM11, since he's both 3 hours later timezone and generally stays up later as well (aside of course from the actual civ skills).

I just played the third turn and I was advised to check out our Civics. At the moment we are in Religion, but for when we start training troops I think we will want to be in Nationhood. What do you think about switching to Nationhood right after the Worker is done? I'm not sure the 10% bonus production will speed up a Scout or a Warrior, so I am probably going to have to try it out in a Single Player game tomorrow.

I would be inclined to wait until we're also swapping another civic, perhaps to Agrarianism or God King. I'm pretty sure the 10% bonus doesn't help any until we make at least 10 hammers in the city, so we can afford to wait.

We will be wanting Training Yards all over the place eventually, since we're planning to focus on the melee line, while we don't have any specific religion plans, so eventually we should switch; just not yet.

[Mardoc]

Something else that occurs to me - since I'm nervous of spoilers, I'll generally not move any units in the saves I open for information. If you discover something worth talking about while scouting, please post pictures. Otherwise my map knowledge will be a turn behind. This isn't a complaint, of course, since everywhere our scouts could have gone is already revealed by the settler, just a future note.

I'm sure lurkers (if there are any left) would appreciate the info too

[Tredje]

Aye, I will try to keep you supplied with up-to-date screenshots. So far nothing new has been discovered, but on the upcoming turn the Scout will explore the Hut and the Warrior will venture into uncharted Forest.

[Tredje]

Turn 3 and our brave Goblin enters the hut. He finds an old map of the surrounding area. I don't know about you, but I find maps to be underwhelming compared to techs. Still, the map gave us valuable information about the are to the northeast, and I have to say that it looks very good. Settling in that direction looks promising. Several happy resources, flood plains. Nice. The map also revealed another hut to the northeast, and I think we should send the Goblin towards it, staying in forest as much as possible. Maybe he'll even encounter a Wolf on his way?

[Mardoc]

Turn 3 and our brave Goblin enters the hut. He finds an old map of the surrounding area. I don't know about you, but I find maps to be underwhelming compared to techs.

Oh, definitely. Still better than hostile barbs (although I wonder if they would be hostile, for us), but that's about all you can say for it. I do agree, the land past the jungle looks a lot nicer, and with a good variety of resources, too. And a nice river system for commerce! And a handy goblin fort, if we want to buy mercenaries. I don't think we do, though - we'll have plenty of production compared to gold; we're the only civ that doesn't start with a tech, I think, so we're already behind. Make sure to visit the ancient tower on the way to the next hut, please

With all those rivers, I definitely think we'll want to run Aristograrianism sooner rather than later - maybe we should go directly from Mining to Masonry toward Code of Laws (via Ancient Chants -> Education). Mining definitely comes first, though - getting those gems mined will almost double our tech rate.

[Tredje]

Sareln posted in the Tech Thread that he won't play the save for another 3 hours, at which point I will be sound asleep. Feel free to play the turn if you have the time Mardoc. I think I had intended to move the Warrior 1 SW and the Goblin towards the Ancient Tower, but you can have a look and decide what's best.

[Mardoc]

We'll see - last night it didn't come in until 3 am local, nearly at your preferred timeslot anyway And I really don't think everyone else could handle 2 turns/day, even if our end turned them around that fast. It's still got to go through Iskender after Sareln has his shot.

[Mardoc]

Yeah, it definitely looks as though the save coming in late for you won't be a problem - it's consistently showing up around 8 GMT, giving you 16 hours to play.

Assuming the blitz happens, I'll try to be around for it, (16-22 GMT Sunday works for me, which is so far the consensus time), but honestly I don't expect any FFH specific questions to come up for which you'd need my input. Although - if the blitz ends up lasting for the whole 6 hours, maybe there will be enough progress for that!

At some point we want to make sure to get 50 gold in the treasury in case of events, but hopefully huts will manage that for us. It's really annoying to have the chance to buy a Great Prophet cheap and miss out because you didn't have the treasury (also annoying to miss out cause you're the wrong alignment, but that's at least something you can't predict). Other than that, though, it's standard civ expansion as the goal.