[SPOILERS] The Peaceful Centaur: a Study in Possibility

[Mardoc]

I thought Agriculture cost more beakers than Ancient Chants though? My reasoning was that if they've finished a tech already it must be one of the 79 beaker techs. There's no accurate reference for tech costs on the net though that I can find so I can't check now.

Agriculture certainly makes more sense for Ichabod since he's been going worker first. So if it is the same cost then that would be it.

The 79 beaker techs are Agriculture, Exploration, and Ancient Chants. Exploration makes even less sense to me than those two, but strictly speaking we can't rule it out.

There are 1391 tiles on our map, which works out to ~230 for each of us, or a ~15x15 square. Which seems like we should have plenty of room, although that discounts all these nasty deserts/tundras. Given that Kwythellar to Boatmurdered is about 15 squares, your number (2) seems quite likely. Although I agree the best test is to continue exploring. I do want to send someone north, in the theory that Maksim's made a land of milk and honey somewhere hidden, but so far that's looking...unlikely. Given the lack of happiness resources evident, I suspect Kuriotate wares to be in high demand, though!

Oh, and we might consider a non-default naming scheme! At the moment I have no ideas, but maybe something will come to me or a lurker can suggest something good.

[fire&ice]

Oh, and we might consider a non-default naming scheme! At the moment I have no ideas, but maybe something will come to me or a lurker can suggest something good.

I think you need two naming scemes one for the centuar people and one for you angel of doom. :neenernee

[NobleHelium]

You could just uh, name them after centaurs. Or maybe horse breeds. And the Basium cities after angels.

[Irgy]

I'm thinking of sending this to Ichabod. We should keep up communications, and I want to make a point of telling him not to pop the dungeon near us.

[COLOR="Magenta"]We're sorry to hear about your troubles with the caerps, although we admire the bravery of your scout in daring to explore a dungeon. We greatly appreciate being informed of the situation. We'd also strongly prefer such bravery not to be displayed anywhere near our borders. I'm sure you understand.

As you no doubt noticed by now, our scout was happy to take your word on the wonders or lack thereof in the possibly mighty city of boatmurdered, and has followed your request by heading south instead. He can currently see in the distance a blue glow which appears to be the aura of the Elohim, and we expect to make contact next turn. They appear to be directly to the south of the gold in the desert. Sorry, did I say gold? I mean the hill of worthless but slightly shinier sand. The three of us form something of an equilateral triangle, with the shiny sand roughly in the centre of it.

Best of luck avoiding the caerps and whatever else comes your way.[/COLOR]

Haven't sent it yet, but will if I don't hear an objection.

[Irgy]

The 79 beaker techs are Agriculture, Exploration, and Ancient Chants. Exploration makes even less sense to me than those two, but strictly speaking we can't rule it out.

For some reason I had Agriculture the same price as Crafting. Don't really know why now. That explains the confusion anyway, and I agree with your analysis.

There are 1391 tiles on our map, which works out to ~230 for each of us, or a ~15x15 square. ... Given that Kwythellar to Boatmurdered is about 15 squares, your number (2) seems quite likely.

Righto. Thanks for working that out! I'm feeling more and more sure of my (2) arrangement by the minute then. We're exactly 15 squares north of the Elohim too (although we settled 2S of where we started). So we'll hit the coast about 8 tiles north of where we are. Does that match how long it took Selrahc to get there? I think it only does if they knew to move into the tundra, something I still don't understand.

Something that's occurred to me. If we're confident on this 2x3 zig-zagged layout, I think we actually want to send the scout west. With that layout, topologically we have 4 neighbours and 1 opposite civ. I think we'd really prefer to find the opposite civ if we can, for a few reasons (from least to most important):
* They're the hardest to get to, and the earlier you send out a scout the easier it is (less animals spawned)
* They're the least likely civ to save us the trouble by finding us themselves.
* Finding them determines exactly who all of our topological neighbours are in one go.
* They're our natural geographic ally.

Which seems like we should have plenty of room, although that discounts all these nasty deserts/tundras.

Doesn't seem like that much room to me. That's about 11 cities each - 6x11x21 = 1386 ~= 1391. Slightly more with overlap and coast, but then a lot less when you take out the desert and tundra and consider the lack of coast. From what we've seen so far, only maybe 2/3 is something better than tundra.

Maybe it's not that much less total land than normal, but because it's also a big flat plane people are much closer together than normal. 1391 tiles in a complicated continent with a fractal coastline takes up significantly more overall space than 1391 tiles of a big solid rectangle, leaving everyone further apart to begin with. Also, if the land wraps around everyone is closer together - in comparison if there was a big ocean break we could spread out to the edges. And people are normally effectively further apart again when they can't just walk in a straight line from one capital to the other, due to mountains or coastline.

Add all that together and you start to see why I feel so squashed in here.

The kind-of-central location we've settled in also actually makes it a bit awkward for us to be honest. Given a 15x15 square, if we're in the dead middle of it then we can't quite actually settle a single other city in our own box. The closest we can come is as marked with the 'T' and the '2's:

Code:

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xxxxxxcccxxxxxx
xxxxxcccccxxxxx
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xx222cccccxxxxx
x22222cccxxxxxx
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222T222xxxxxxxx
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x22222xxxxxxxxx

It nearly fits, but if you consider that we lose 2 rows and columns on each side to desert, and more importantly that we want to settle good megacity locations not just wherever fits, we're going to really struggle to settle somewhere that doesn't break into other people's territory. Just something to keep in mind.

Although I agree the best test is to continue exploring. I do want to send someone north, in the theory that Maksim's made a land of milk and honey somewhere hidden, but so far that's looking...unlikely. Given the lack of happiness resources evident, I suspect Kuriotate wares to be in high demand, though!

I'm not sure there's that much of a lack of happiness resources. We've seen gold, incense and dyes in just one desert junction, I'd expect there may be different resources at the others, and who knows what else is to the north. We can partly discard our conventional expectations of where we might expect to find which sorts of resources.

Oh, and we might consider a non-default naming scheme! At the moment I have no ideas, but maybe something will come to me or a lurker can suggest something good.

I suck at naming schemes, and conveniently also tend to like the defaults. But I'm happy to go with something. I think having different names for settlements (-> Mercurian cities) to the three super-cities is a good idea, but let's not give the game away completely just yet. I mean, honestly, anyone who cross references the three civ picks with a comment I made in the PBEM3 tech thread will have figured it out already, but I expect that's not all the players.

In that case we only need exactly 3 names for the megacities though - not so much a scheme then as, well, 3 names. The three centaurs of the apocalypse? The remaining three of those man-eating Mares of Diomedes other than my alleged mother from the intro post (Podagros, Lampon, Deinos)?

[Mardoc]

Looks like a good message for Ichabod. Although, in the future, can you use a slightly lighter shade of purple, maybe even shading into pink? That's hard to read on a black background.

I like the Mares idea, naming cities after your aunts.

And your analysis of the map is somewhat depressing, but true. We might have to aim for victory ahead of the Gate if we're that cramped.

[Irgy]

Looks like a good message for Ichabod. Although, in the future, can you use a slightly lighter shade of purple, maybe even shading into pink? That's hard to read on a black background.

Sorry, that's not even the right colour - it's my Sheaim colour that I use in the other thread. Maybe I should change that one though. I've fixed the post here anyway.

EDIT - oh and sent the email too.

I like the Mares idea, naming cities after your aunts.

The other thing I forgot to ask is what to call ourselves in game. I'm happy to stick with Cardith Lorda mind you. We could have some hybrid thing like "Irgith Mordac" or whatever you'd prefer?

And your analysis of the map is somewhat depressing, but true. We might have to aim for victory ahead of the Gate if we're that cramped.

We certainly need to consider the possibility of a centaur rush anyway. Particularly since we plan to get them fairly quickly. I'm picturing:
Anceint Chants -> Mysticism -> Education -> [cash? hard to judge] -> Animal Love -> Horseback Riding

Probably followed by writing as otherwise we won't even get the half price library at all.

[NobleHelium]

Mardoc and Cardith already share four letters. You could go with Cardom as an anagram, then do something with Lorda and Irgy.

[Irgy]

Not much news, contacted the Elohim as expected:


I'm pretty sure I want to send the scout west next now, but between the desert and two peaks there was no point in having the scout 1W of where it is now even if we do head west next.

I should have looked at the new graphs to see what Dantski's been up to, but I haven't yet. We should send him a greeting too, I'll get on to that soon.

[Mardoc]

The other thing I forgot to ask is what to call ourselves in game. I'm happy to stick with Cardith Lorda mind you. We could have some hybrid thing like "Irgith Mordac" or whatever you'd prefer?

Whatever we use needs to be simple and easy for the other teams to remember. Maybe Irgith Lorda and Marglith Lorda, depending on who's talking?

We certainly need to consider the possibility of a centaur rush anyway. Particularly since we plan to get them fairly quickly. I'm picturing:
Anceint Chants -> Mysticism -> Education -> [cash? hard to judge] -> Animal Love -> Horseback Riding

Probably followed by writing as otherwise we won't even get the half price library at all.

That tech path seems quite reasonable, except for that minor typo with husbandry

I'm not sure if we want to rush someone or not, although I'll admit we're in good situation to do so, with a large early capital (and maybe 2nd or 3rd city), and no stable or horses required. Probably best to keep our mind open and decide as the situation warrants. At the moment, if we rush anyone, it probably shouldn't be Ichabod, although it might be worth a detour southward to make Dantski burn his worldspell? In any case, we'll know more shortly, I presume, as the Ratman continues his journey.

Now that I know our official move, I duplicated it so I can look around in the save. Looking at the graphs isn't terribly enlightening, but a couple things stand out. First, Dantski settled first turn, although I think we already knew that. Dantski's been all over the place with what tiles he's working - his manufacturing has been at 3, 5, and 4. There's an amusing culture pause at turn 3 - I'm sure he switched civics when the pop-up came . Finally, it appears he's built 2 warriors already.