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

[DaveV]

I don't have time to do it right now, but I'll try to come up with a new dotmap. Maybe there's nothing better than what you already cooked up.

My suggestion: the plains hill SW of Standing Stones. Four tiles of overlap with your Ivory city, but one of those tiles is a peak. This isn't a great city, but it has a couple of lakeside grassland tiles plus the bananas. If the orcs or dwarves don't grab it, I'd settle on your "CIII lion" sign next (assuming you're going for Bronze Working soon).

[Bobchillingworth]

My suggestion: the plains hill SW of Standing Stones. Four tiles of overlap with your Ivory city, but one of those tiles is a peak. This isn't a great city, but it has a couple of lakeside grassland tiles plus the bananas. If the orcs or dwarves don't grab it, I'd settle on your "CIII lion" sign next (assuming you're going for Bronze Working soon).

Not a bad location, although I worry that a city at "CIII lion" might be too aggressive (and I'd need one there to get the best resources). Do you envision the plains hill city as an immediate priority expansion or filler?

I may build my next city to the NE, toward Serdoa- there's a hill where I'd like to plant in order to get cultural control on that front as well.




I founded my first expansion this turn:






I'm the first person to expand, according to the demographics. Hopefully the others pick up the pace soon, I don't want to get stuck with the "runaway" label. Combee is a little aggressive on my part, but it's not that distant from my capital. It neatly seals in the Clan from the west, and so I want to get the garrison in it to four warriors quickly. To that end I'll finish a warrior in the city in 5 more turns, and I have a 1 turn warrior completing in Jubilee next turn.

My military is too light right now, with only four warriors, a scout who is going to be eaten by a bear next turn, and two workers. Planned builds are as follows:


Combee View: Warrior -> Elder Council -> Market (if I have the tech) -> Palisade (?)


Jubilee: Warrior -> Elder Council -> Warrior -> Worker -> Warrior -> Warrior -> Settler -> Loki, with a Market thrown in whenever I get festivals.


The several warrior builds in Jubilee are to garrison my next expansion and extra security for when I pop the grave. Also worker escort duty if I'm able to start pre-roading to my expansion sites.


Myst comes in next turn, I'll revolt the turn after. Mining is up next, and then either exploration or festivals.


Forgot to mention, a nice side benefit of founding Combee was that I revealed what looks like a small island to the south, which can pick up the fish. That means I can found my horse city in a more optimal location where the sign is (rather than the tile it indicates), and not waste the fish.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hmm, several posts in Tredje's thread, but I haven't had contact from anyone but always-friendly Sareln regarding the game for days now. Thankfully Jubilee can build 1-turn warriors with God King (which I get next turn), plus another one turn warrior next turn due to overflow (with another having completed this turn).



And it looks like I accidentally erased several of the pics from the start of my thread when I tried to clean out my dropbox folder I'll add them back later.

[Ellimist]

I'm enjoying the thread, keep it up.

What are your thoughts on going for Mind III? I've always considered the Balseraphs to be naturals because if the spell fails, the puppet loses the skill and you just summon a fresh one next turn. Or is this not effective in multiplayer due to "loyalty"?

[Bobchillingworth]

Thanks for the appreciation



Mind mana is def. the Balseraph's "thing". I start with free mind mana, and Perp's pedia entry all but screams "use dominate on stuff, you sodden moron". I at present do still intend to build Gibbon, but I'm more tempted to go for the Earth line of promos for the base strength 11 Earth elementals. I could, and may still, have him specialize in both mind & earth, but it will be awfully tempting to instead follow the combat line for Empower boosts on elementals and eventually twincasting (plus making Gibbon himself a capable combat unit).


Dominate is fairly situational. If I had a lot of those bugged Goblin Forts near me I'd place a much higher priority on it, since I'd love to have a half-dozen free +1 strength archers. If one of my opponents is running around with slow, powerful units which for whatever reason lack Loyalty, then it's certainly a tempting spell. But it has some major disadvantages. Only a 90% chance of flipping a unit means that earth elementals will likely get better odds to eliminate a tier I or II unit. And unlike elementals I can't use Dominate for stack defense. Plus it wastes my summoner trait, and has a dangerously short range for MP play. I think like so many of the Balz' toys Dominate may be best saved for Perp, with Keelyn focusing more on combat summons.



I'm hoping to even survive to that point, though :P I tried to get an effort going for SL, Sareln, and Iskender to join me in settling toward the Clan with their first expansions, in order to contain them. This would have had the side benefit for me of giving Tredje multiple targets. Sadly it seems that everyone will plant their expansions in other directions and are only pledging to build their third cities in the Clan's direction. Alarmingly, I've heard all this only through Sareln- the lack of communication from SL is very troubling. Combined with the extra chatter in Tredje's thread, I suspect I'm number one on their hit-list. Staying focused on short-term priorities to meet my long-term goals is going to be my main challenge for this game, followed closely by overconfidence. Oh yeah, and my opponents are probably going to challenge me too

[Hesmyrr]

Looks like you learned the valuable trait of paranoia from playing in FFH PBEM I

At current juncture the "fish island" does not look that promising though- I mean, I think I see oceans on three sides which mean the land tiles are going to be meagre. It might even be one-tile island. I guess +1 Health matters in higher difficulties.

No insight to offer about expansion plans, except that both 1E cow site and Lion site will be regarded as 'aggressive' in my opinion. I am guessing you also abandoned your plan to rush your city toward either of those sites before building Standing Stones city, with ominous signs from orcs and all. Hope your new dot map turns out well.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah, I think rushing the Cow / Gems site with my first expansion would have been indefensible, both militarily and diplomatically.


I forgot to take a screencap, but my borders in Coombe (isn't that a pokemon?) expanded this turn, revealing that the "fish island" is larger than one tile. Worth exploring some day, but boats aren't on my priority list.



SL rung me up for a chat today- he said he'll send some screen shot info of land he's uncovered to my east tomorrow. He's also worried about Serdoa and asked that I tell him if Serdoa starts talking about any plans for aggression. In return he pledged to tell me if the Clan are thinking of attacking me. I haven't heard from Serdoa since our initial contact, so nothing to report to SL right now. I think I might neglect to mention if Serdoa and I get to talking again, though SL seems to clearly want to be on friendly terms, but I think his civ is more of a long-term threat than the Sheaim. Of course I'll reciprocate his tone of friendship for now; who knows if Serdoa will even follow through and actually attack him.

[Bobchillingworth]

Got this image in from SL:





Some very useful map info here. Note that the non-city dot annotations were done by SL



My plan right now is to settle Green Dot as my next city, and the Orange afterwards. They'll be expensive, but thanks to Creative will seal off the rest of my eastern land from the Sheaim. Sadly this means I'm going to have to put my western settling on hold, but I don't think that anyone will be so bold as to try to snatch the Standing Stones away from me. Blue dot is a solid city which I'll probably hold off on until I have aristofarms, and yellow is a crappy filler.

[Bobchillingworth]

Revolted to Godking this turn- I'm now #1 in GDP (due to culture, though), #1 in production, #1 in land area, and tied for first in population. I also beat up a goblin with my Combat II + Shock warrior, getting enough exp to take Combat III. I kind of hope that Orthus spawns near my capital so that I can get a super-warrior for defence & the +2 exp statue whose name I can never remember.

[Caustic Soda]

The statue is called the [strike]Collosus of Rhodes[/strike] Form of the Titan.

On an unrelated note, what is your situation worker-wise? what does your tech plan look like?