Nicolae Carpathia and Selrahc bring about World Peace, UHC, Apocalypse as Sheaim

[xenin]

While I remember, keep in mind if you are planning worker micro or something that marshes cost two move points to enter and it takes 25%(?) longer to build improvements on them.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

You can't even scorch Marshes? You'd think that would make sense.

Sorry for lack of details recently, I've been playing a Lanun game and they're actually really fun in a buildery rexy kind of way. I actually prefer Falamar over Hannah, because their appeal is the crazy-high yield pirate coves, and Financial is only a 20% boost to them. You lack the happy cap to use the 2/0/3 coasts as well. On the other hand, Expansive gives you twice as many pirate ports, and city-states lets you Rex like crazy.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I might end up confusing people with my terminology, but when I talk about directions, I prefer to use the numpad as a reference. As in:

789
456
123

I don't even have a numpad on my laptop! But I find it a nice shorthand.

[xenin]

You can't even scorch Marshes? You'd think that would make sense.

It does make sense, and I think it's actually added in the Naval AI modmod, but I just checked in game and nothing works on them in base FFH.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

T1-2 report:

Scout popped 34g from a hut. Kinda weak.

Next turn, he spotted the Pyre of the Seraphic. Let's see, a 2nd Fire Mana, I guess free Blaze is nice but I've never really seen the point of that spell (unless I want to grief the elves). Plus, our Mages will have their hands tied summoning spectres instead of fireballs.

Worth tagging the watchtower next turn? Shouldn't reveal too much more, I'll sit our garrison warrior on it for safety's sake.

Let's see, we have 1266 land tiles, so a decent size. Ancient age techs seemt to be worth 11pts. Therefore, I think Gaspar just popped a tech from a hut. Which sucks for us

T1 demos:


T2 demos:

[Selrahc]

Next turn, he spotted the Pyre of the Seraphic. Let's see, a 2nd Fire Mana, I guess free Blaze is nice but I've never really seen the point of that spell (unless I want to grief the elves). Plus, our Mages will have their hands tied summoning spectres instead of fireballs.

The pyre can be explored. When to do it is a tricky question. As an insane person, I would favour right away. Getting a T5 Great Merchant or Sage is so fantastic that it can make you a runaway. The big risk is getting a big bad result. And that could kill you. A lot of the big bad spawns though are survivable if inconvenient.

It's up to you how mad you want to play it. Getting a posse of warriors together to surround the lair prevents any chance of a bad result, but takes time and effort.

Once the pyre has been explored, the Fire Mana needs elementalism to improve it into a workable form again. And more realistically, will be dispelled and turned into lovely lovely death mana.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Does it spawn monsters as well? It looks like it's on a hill of some sort, may be worth fortifying a warrior on top of it. I think I'll leave it off for now, insanely risky play when you're allowed to save and reload is for SP.

[xenin]

It counts as an epic dungeon, so the good/bad effects that can result are more extreme. It doesn't actually spawn stuff naturally, only when you explore it. Worst case you pop a named monster and some nasty backup, best case is usually some form of great person.

Ideally you would wait to explore it until you can put the 9-man complete surround in place and stop any risks, but the problem is that other people are almost certain to pop it by then. If the pyre was closer you could probably get it inside borders and then include a no-pop clause in any OB agreement, but I think that it's going to take too long to get a city there. The likelihood is that someone's scout is going to wander by and see it, but the risk/reward calculation for them is different, particularly if their start is further away - anything bad is going to eat their scout but then probably head to you anyway.

Frankly I think the best solution is to make an agreement with other players not to pop epic lairs for the first X turns before the game starts, since otherwise you end up in this prisoner's dilemma situation where everyone wants to pop lairs far away -> people have to pop ones close to them anyway -> massive randomness with early GP/someone getting owned by mistforms. Probably a bit late for that now, but frankly I'm not sure what the right call is on popping it in the current situation. If it was SP I'd go for it for sure, but the game could be over right here if you get a bad diceroll.

[Selrahc]

Does it spawn monsters as well? It looks like it's on a hill of some sort, may be worth fortifying a warrior on top of it. I think I'll leave it off for now, insanely risky play when you're allowed to save and reload is for SP.

No save and reload! Saving and reloading is just cheating. If I pop something bad from a lair in SP I attempt to deal with it. Most bad lair pops are survivable. The fact that if it all goes wrong I can easily start anew does change things though.

Ideally you would wait to explore it until you can put the 9-man complete surround in place and stop any risks, but the problem is that

If done early it halts expansion and costs a lot of money.

The likelihood is that someone's scout is going to wander by and see it, but the risk/reward calculation for them is different, particularly if their start is further away - anything bad is going to eat their scout but then probably head to you anyway.

This is true.



If you don't want to do it now, get 4-5 warriors in the capital after the worker then pop it. That would leave only mistborns as a serious risk of eliminating you.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Only 8 warriors needed to block off weird spawn, thanks to that peak. Still, I'd much rather have those 128 hammers or so invested into workers and part of a settler than warriors, but that's probably my BTS side talking. I could never do something like tech to philosophy without building a single worker.