[SPOILERS]- Crazy Keelyn is trippin’ Balz: Bobchillingworth of the Balseraphs

[Bobchillingworth]

Double cotton? That's a crummy city that will never be a big contributor. It's in your back lines so you can settle it any time. Sure, it increases your happy cap, but so does *Festivals* which should have been a very early tech choice. Get your Freak on.


I would research Festivals as your very next tech; it unlocks a lot of Balseraph goodness and boosts your economy with Markets. You don't really need the culture from Freak Shows, but expanding your borders is almost always helpful. But +1 happy for 40 hammers is a pretty good deal, especially since you can spend the hammers in your capital.

My rationale for that city is that I need commerce pretty badly right now. I've got plenty of production from my capital, which will be able to easily pump military and civilian units once I have godking and a couple mines. The cotton town will have a significant 8 commerce from the cotton, another commerce from the fish, and a mine to work so that I can get out a market & elder council. Since I got calendar from a hut, it won't take long to make the town productive. And backlines is an advantage, here- less of my scare early troops needed to garrison the thing. I don't have a clue where anyone is, so there isn't a clear priority for me to settle in a different direction. I'll post a territory map next turn, if I can remember. I'm happy to entertain suggestions for alternate city locations, but please bear in mind that I can't actually do much more than build farms right now. If I want to fill in those worker techs quickly to make better locations actually productive, then I think working the only clear commerce site open to me at the moment ASAP makes the most sense. It's a marginal city, but it provides its benefit now, whereas something with a bunch of fp and mines is worthless when I lack mining and CoL (and can't run any specialists).


Festivals is a fine tech, and I want it soon, but what's the incredible rush? I'm not desperate for market gold right now, and settling the cotton will give me additional happiness (plus the capital already has +2 extra happy from the wines and Poor of Tears, so even without the cotton it can grow to size 7). I think I'd prefer to get some actual production first from Godking and mines. I also don't see the need to produce Freaks before I've actually met anyone- not like they gain passive exp. And I'll have nothing to upgrade them to for a while. If the idea is to get them killing stuff for adept exp, shouldn't I wait until they've got bronze weapons, so that it's less of a crapshot if they survive combat? If the issue is exploration, than Loki makes more sense. Basically, yeah I can use freakshows and carnivals to boost my happy cap to a rather impressive level, but all that does is allow my capital to work some random unimproved tiles if I don't even have mining first.




And I was a little nervous, Hes. But only a little

[DaveV]

My rationale for that city is that I need commerce pretty badly right now. I've got plenty of production from my capital, which will be able to easily pump military and civilian units once I have godking and a couple mines. The cotton town will have a significant 8 commerce from the cotton, another commerce from the fish, and a mine to work so that I can get out a market & elder council. Since I got calendar from a hut, it won't take long to make the town productive. And backlines is an advantage, here- less of my scare early troops needed to garrison the thing. I don't have a clue where anyone is, so there isn't a clear priority for me to settle in a different direction. I'll post a territory map next turn, if I can remember. I'm happy to entertain suggestions for alternate city locations, but please bear in mind that I can't actually do much more than build farms right now. If I want to fill in those worker techs quickly to make better locations actually productive, then I think working the only clear commerce site open to me at the moment ASAP makes the most sense. It's a marginal city, but it provides its benefit now, whereas something with a bunch of fp and mines is worthless when I lack mining and CoL (and can't run any specialists).

OK, you're the best judge of what your civ needs now (although cotton is only 3 commerce, so it's pretty weak). Looking at your screenshots, I don't see any other good commerce sites. But building a second city with poor long-term potential is going to cost you. I'm just urging you to make sure that sacrifice is warranted.

Festivals is a fine tech, and I want it soon, but what's the incredible rush? I'm not desperate for market gold right now, and settling the cotton will give me additional happiness (plus the capital already has +2 extra happy from the wines and Poor of Tears, so even without the cotton it can grow to size 7). I think I'd prefer to get some actual production first from Godking and mines. I also don't see the need to produce Freaks before I've actually met anyone- not like they gain passive exp. And I'll have nothing to upgrade them to for a while. If the idea is to get them killing stuff for adept exp, shouldn't I wait until they've got bronze weapons, so that it's less of a crapshot if they survive combat? If the issue is exploration, than Loki makes more sense. Basically, yeah I can use freakshows and carnivals to boost my happy cap to a rather impressive level, but all that does is allow my capital to work some random unimproved tiles if I don't even have mining first.

Markets are a great building to have with God King: 4.5 gold with the multiplier. This should let you run a higher slider and research faster. The reason for building Freaks is that the ones with good mutations are much better than warriors.

[Bobchillingworth]

After like six turns of squatting outside my capital, the goblins finally decided to suicide, doing only minor damage to a couple warriors. Of course a third one is approaching from the north now, sigh. Hopefully they'll keep coming once I have bronze freaks, for future adept exp.


Scout finished, so on to a 15 turn settler- production time should decrease noticeably once I finally complete my farms and pasture.

[Bobchillingworth]

Here's a slightly larger map of the territory I've revealed so far, with a preliminary dotmap:





Note that there is a fish 2S of the cotton city, and a jungle rice 2N of the Standing Stones town.


I'm tempted to settle the horse city after the cotton because it won't take much effort to make it productive, but perhaps I should hold off there, as it's a secure location and I don't have any intention right now of building horsemen. On the plus side, it gets a dungeon under my control, so I don't have to worry about an enemy opening it (unless they do so by declaring war, at least).

[Bobchillingworth]

I wish to extend my sincere thanks to the mapmaker for generating a world with as awesome a grave as this.


Also thanks for the now three raw mana nodes + standing stones. And the second grave. And the gems! =)



Plan is to move on to the grave next turn with the scout (renamed Tingle), and then unless I see a hut or something next to it I'll explore the site. If it pops nasties Tingle should still have a movement point left to run to the gems- depending on where the enemies spawn, they'll have have to attack him across a river into a jungle, so odds would be with him to survive vs. a strength 3 opponent.

[Selrahc]

Plan is to move on to the grave next turn with the scout (renamed Tingle), and then unless I see a hut or something next to it I'll explore the site.

Pity you don't have mysticism. That would be an incredibly epic location to discover Knowledge of the Ether.

[Bobchillingworth]

Sadly my luck with graves remains poor:






It popped two skeletons, and a lion blocks my best escape route. I'd normally risk the 50% coin flip and charge the lion, but he's Combat III- looks like settling West should be my priority once my first expansion is down. I ended up running on to the gems tile- Tingle won't have odds to survive, but at least he revealed a few new tiles (all grassland, two with forests).

[Bobchillingworth]

Now that I think more about it, I'm inclined to take Dave's advice and settle somewhere besides the cotton first. I want commerce badly, but the total of +6 from the 2X cotton isn't very impressive. The biggest reason to reconsider though is that CIII lion- it's pretty obvious that there's someone somewhere to my west, and with animals having only been in the game for twenty turns or so I think it's likely there's someone fairly close by. So I want to start getting my Creative cultural control spreading over as much claimable land as possible. To that end, settling 1S of the western ivory seems like it may be my best option for a first expansion. The first border expansion will cover what looks like a choke point leading to my capital, and it's on a river for some initial commerce. It will also block off access to the dungeon, which is still a concern. And, of course, Dave usually is right about this kind of stuff.


Cotton might be taken with my expansion after that, depends on what the situation is. I need to squeeze out another scout at some point to check out the east. Loki would be ideal, but I can't afford him until I have Godking and several mines.

[Bobchillingworth]

Aaaand after an hour and-a-half of waiting for Square Leg, the first turn of the blitz is off!


The skeleton quite understandably hesitated to involve his person in any close contact with Tingle, and so I was able to flee to safety in the north.







Gaining contact with none other than Square Leg himself


Looks like the mana formerly occupied by a grave is about exactly between us- it will need to be a major setting objective for me. I'll post some thoughts about the Luchiurp later.

[Bobchillingworth]

We only ended up getting through a couple turns, due to Square Leg showing up late and then having to rush his wife to the emergency room, but they were at least eventful turns for me.



Immediately after I met SL:







It's the Sheaim! This is both good and bad. Bad because they're the goshdamn Sheaim. But good because SL is perhaps Serdoa's best possible target who isn't me. More on that in just a sec.



Before he had to leave, I chatted a little bit with Square Leg of the Dwarves. I don't intend to post many chats in this thread unless people demand I do for some reason, so I'll summarize instead:



* Square Leg has met everyone now except for Iskender, who only Sareln has met. Serdoa is Square Leg's closest neighbor (and visa-versa), only approx 12 tiles to his east. Tredoc's Clan are to his southwest. Sareln's Amurities are somewhere to SL's west. Since Sareln was the only player mentioned as having contacted Iskender, I think it's reasonable to assume that Iskender inhabits the far west. Put it all together, and you get a wretched Paint-rendered map like this:






Pay no mind to the shape of the continents- I just randomly drew every coastline but my own, obviously having no idea what they really look like. What's more important of course is the spatial relationship of all the players to each other, which from the information I have on hand should be mostly accurate (with some guessing for Iskender). The ugly green line represents the band of jungle along the equator. Acheron is almost certainly on some lonely Questing Island, pining for his horde which I think uberfish forgot to edit in



So, assuming the players are positioned roughly as my map has them, my neighbors will be the Sheaim, Luchiurp, and Clan. All the power civs, but neither of the two which can easily specialize in murdering spellcasters. The main continent appears to be fairly small, so Creative may end up being more useful than I initially thought.


Other notes from the Square Leg chat:


* The Death Mana from the Broken Sepulcher lies between SL and Serdoa (the Sepulcher itself was destroyed after a successful exploration attempt by SL). Sl is worried about Serdoa obtaining it, but he doesn't think that he could hold a city that grabs it, since it's closer to Serdoa.

* SL got something nice from exploring the Sepulcher, but it's not clear what it was. Not a free Golden Age. He also spawned a named scorpion, which is pictured in my Sheaim contact picture. Apparently it has walked quite a distance. Serdoa is unhappy that SL kept exploring the Sepulcher. I also should note here that the stack of three Luchuirp units are all warriors. Two not promoted, top one is CIII, IIRC.

* The Combat III Lion earned his stars by eating one of SL's warriors.

* Besides the Sepulcher, SL has found the Seven Pines and Remnants of Patria.

* Perhaps most importantly, SL wants to attack Serdoa out of fear that the Sheaim will eventually grow too powerful. He's afraid to do so however, because his weak-to-fire Wood Golems are about the worst UU ever to pit against the PZ. He said he has a secret invasion plan he's working on to get around this issue; I suggested he invest in chariots (which would arrive a few dozen turns later than he needs and would be a poor tech path diversion if he were to actually build any =) ). It will be very interesting to find out what he's talking about. Possibly catapult spam, or massed hunters.



Shortly after the blitz prematurely ceased, I had fairly long conversation with Serdoa. The highlights:


* Serdoa's capital is almost parallel to SL's- about a dozen tiles distant, and a couple tiles further south.

* He claimed that he hadn't gone into the game intending to build any PZ, but now sees little recourse.

* It seems clear that he wants to attack SL. He also kept asking me what I would do in his (Serdoa's) situation. I answered honestly that he should attack SL. He really should- he has a significant UU advantage coming up, he has casus belli from the Sepulcher exploration (if he ever needed one), and it's going to be very risky for him to let SL produce any golems better than wood, since they resist death magic. I don't want Serdoa becoming too powerful, but if he's busy throwing his hammers at the guy who right now seems to be my closest neighbor, then I'm eager for him to start his war.

* Serdoa mentioned a couple times that he'd really like it if I joined in too. I told him that I certainly wouldn't assist SL, but that since I'm not going to be equipped with anything early as dangerous as PZ I can't promise much in the way of military aid. I did float the possibility of at least dispatching Loki to bother SL- his puppets are a menace to workers (less menacing to mudgolems, but still even odds).

* Serdoa seems to want peaceful relations between our civs, so I'm thankful for that. He would like to get in contact with Sareln soon, seeking to set up a dogpile vs. SL.