Cultural Domination in Balance: EitB Succesion Game

[Mardoc]

Alright, first things first: how far do we have left?
T120:


We're number 1!

And...man, do we have a long way to go yet. Glad I've got comrades for the journey!

T121:
Ooh, an uncultured city! How much is this going to cost, anyway?




Oof. 16 gold/turn, to grab a foothold halfway across the map. Out of a total current income of 34. And yet...I think it's a good idea. Because pushing this far, through both sets of elves, would take forever and a day.

It does mean that later on we're going to have to put some serious effort into rebuilding our economy, though!

Middle turns: nothing particularly noteworthy. The Heavy Warrior in Myrean kills a bunch of lizardmen, Faeryl signs open borders with us so I send a Freak east, and we drag the econ back up to the 30ish range. While building a bunch of stuff that'll be helpful later, but not in this turnset.

I explored the dungeon, but it only spawned a spectre who became some XP. No awesomeness.

T130: Bronze is in! And I changed my mind after looking at the save: Code of Laws is queued. Although nothing's invested if you want a different route.

Sheelba plants a city that I covet. This one is actually probably pretty vulnerable, so long as she doesn't have another culture source in her back pocket. Alas, Loki's on the far end of the continent (coming home, but he's got a long way to come). Add another city in the area and we might get this one conventionally, though.



And, all in all, we creep a little closer to our goal: 2% land area and 2% population gained!



In progress: Heron Throne is about to be ours, once you end turn. Good idea to build it, Molach! It'll be worth having just for the hammers, let alone for the nice culture boost.

There are a couple settlers nearly done. I think one ought to go to the gems site on the orcish border, to double the pressure on Sheelba's new city and start pushing in on her capital. The other I leave up to you: maybe the Bannor border, maybe take advantage of the Svartalfar open borders and grab something in the gaps over to the east. Maybe use our new bronze weaponry and establish something by the barbs, for that matter.

The save

[Mardoc]

Also - getting enough settlers to grab the last of the free land will probably take 10-20 turns, but we should start thinking about Syliven's Lyre and the Theater of Dreams. Those are both pretty serious investments, but will make a huge difference, especially once we get to trying to convert really stubborn cities. We need to make sure they're ours.

[Qgqqqqq]

I'll get to this tomorrow night, sorry to interrupt our fast pace
Just a general meta thought, but we should (eventually) go Corruption of Spirit->Infernal Pact instead of researching Mercantalism directly, so that we can get the religion+save some beakers.
Are we in God King? Its probably getting close to CoL being worth it just foe the maintenance drop.

[akatosh]

I'll get to this tomorrow night, sorry to interrupt our fast pace
Just a general meta thought, but we should (eventually) go Corruption of Spirit->Infernal Pact instead of researching Mercantalism directly, so that we can get the religion+save some beakers.
Are we in God King? Its probably getting close to CoL being worth it just foe the maintenance drop.

Hey guys still time to join this game?

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah, do you want the next slot?
Edit: its EitB v9, with the dll fix.

[Molach]

Also - getting enough settlers to grab the last of the free land will probably take 10-20 turns, but we should start thinking about Syliven's Lyre and the Theater of Dreams. Those are both pretty serious investments, but will make a huge difference, especially once we get to trying to convert really stubborn cities. We need to make sure they're ours.

Agreed, we really really want these. I think capital can make both. First the lyre while waiting for 2 secondary cities to make theatres. Lyre can start out in Bannor-pressure city, since it has decent raw culture being generated. Or perhaps Svartalfar pressure city.

Orc city as marked is important...at least vital that orcs don't found another city there. Then New Orc city is of little worry, it's exposed to attack once we surround it. Also the final city on the bannor front will be good to plop down. Then we should be about set to rebuild econ and get cracking on cultural war.

I also think CoL next is our best bet. Will hurt food a bit, but then we bulb sanitation and stay equal. Then construction and chain-irrigate everywhere. Once theatre is up we should focus on carnivals and theatres on our border cities and run the specs.

Re infernal pact - corruption of spirit + infernal pact together (+KotE and Philo) cost as much as mercantilism. Then we also must wait for 500 hammer grimoire. We also need to revolt to AV and lose +2 culture from OO. Straight up merc first might be just as fast. We need CoS later for temples, but FotL and leafy temples work just as well. Even RoK temples too.

[Qgqqqqq]

We're Balseraphs. We are getting KotE and Philo.
Besides, we pick those up before researching the pre-reqs for Mercantalism.
+2cpt is peanuts at that stage - by the time we're ready that won't be making any gains.
I think we should plop Lyre in a place like the Luchuirp city - we don't need a hurry to push into the Bannor as its already layered with culturre so we're not going to make many gains, but its useful for quickly pushing it out.

[akatosh]

Q, I can pick up the save after I get off from work today if it's OK with Mardoc and Molach.

Also what is the .dll fix? Anyone have a link?

[Mardoc]

Q, I can pick up the save after I get off from work today if it's OK with Mardoc and Molach.

Fine by me. Just make sure to give a report, tell me what I'm doing wrong .

Oh, and welcome to RB!

Also what is the .dll fix? Anyone have a link?

It fixes a bug that sometimes crashes to desktop when someone builds Nox Noctis. Link here: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid315501


Other topics: the Lyre should be built wherever we have the hammers. That's the best thing about it, that we can move it at will. I think in general we'll want it to be wherever we've already got a lot of culture output, because +100% is a lot more important than +4. But, it depends on the situation, so we can discuss that after we get it built. Which at 750 hammers...will be a while.

Although I agree we'll want Philo and KotE sooner or later, I'm also not really sure Ashen Veil will be worth the investment. Temples give beakers, not culture, spec slots aren't particularly useful - it's much more a war religion than a peace one. And, equally: I'm not convinced that we're going to have more free hammers than free beakers. Worst case, if there's literally nothing else useful to build: build a Zealot and turn him into 20 culture in a border city.

We're getting into the phase where we might want to use the worldspell, and/or use Great People for Golden Ages. I don't think we're quite ready for the WS, but I'd be happy if we could build the Bone Palace somewhere.

[Molach]

Akatosh you are welcome to play.

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About Lyre, +100% means it should go in high-culture cities. Bannor is highest, then the Heron Throne city will be a candidate. Other cities need more cultural Mclovin' first.
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We want all religions present in all cities, since temples add +20% culture. Esus is actually exception, we only need that in unit-production cities. But again, I think AV - Infernal pact now will actually delay our liberty-civic because we need to build the grimoire as well. No god king capital to build it for us...(perhaps build the lyre right away in capital before we jump into Aristo is a good idea). Theatre of dreams would be good to build somewhere other than capital since it gives a bit of culture, but not sure we got any decent cities for it.

Bonehead palace is probably good yes, if we get that it should help both cash/tech and production in this developing phase. WorldSpell should also shorten the wait till we get mercantilism, but better to save that.

Any thoughts of agranism or mercantilism? I think in developed cities agranism will give more food and more specs total - 4 farms means equal number of bard specs, any more and agranism is better. In new low-pop cities mercantilism. But merc also gives a ton of money with +1 gold per specialist, means we can tech other useful stuff and/or rushbuy extra temples and stuff. So perhaps merc is best out of the gate. Caste and republic as well? And, eh undercouncil.